While higher education is regarded a high priority for economic development in many countries, public budgets often fall short to support desired levels of expansion in higher education. This leads to cost-sharing: students and their families are required to contribute more to the costs of higher education. This paper explores worldwide trends to…

European policy-makers hope that by 2010 tertiary education in European countries will be "connected" and become the much sought for European Higher Education Area. The reforms currently unfolding will modernize the daily practices of European higher education institutions. From transferability of degrees, employing a credit-based system…

Explores how the globalization of higher education, for example through electronic delivery or franchising, has given rise to concerns, particularly about quality, but including cultural, economic, and political factors. Describes how some countries have made such efforts to regulate transnational offerings that they have created questionable…

This article focuses on the many requests for change which the University of Belgrade, as a university in a transition country, has been facing from its foundation to the present day. Over the last decade, the University of Belgrade has had to overcome a range of difficulties in an attempt to follow European trends in reforming higher education at…

Explores the recent educational past of Spain, the state of information technology, and the Spanish embrace of globalization tendencies in higher education. Concludes that this has been motivated by internal problems, including the remaining legacy of Franco's regime, a declining university-age population, and the perceived need to participate, at…

Explores how salient aspects of globalization, such as free trade zones, have led to emergence of trans-regional educational exchange schemes (TREES) in higher education. Discusses how these schemes are set apart from others by the proliferation of international university organizations that go beyond region and infiltrate other parts of the globe…

Suggests that the first step toward a European Area for Higher Education, called for by the Bologna Declaration, is for universities to form networks: local, national, continental, and global. The need for such networks is driven by the communications revolution, deregulation, and enhanced global competition in a world that increasingly…

The principal set of challenges facing tertiary education today is that set which links it to the construction of knowledge societies. Governments, the private sector, and the World Bank have specific tasks to perform in meeting these challenges. Countries--depending upon whether or not they are transition economies, low-income countries, or small…

Asserts that the principal driving forces changing higher education are the development of knowledge societies and economies, the all-pervasiveness of information technologies, globalization, and the debate on the public or private nature of higher education. Suggests that these forces generate a myriad of responses that, while defying the…

Asserts that the interaction of twin philosophies in U.S. higher education (commitment to the discovery and furtherance of knowledge, and fulfillment of the needs of the people) has been tempered by public control of higher education through boards of trustees, open admissions for high school graduates, the university in service to the community,…

The newly appointed secretary-general of the International Association of Universities (IAU) reflects on her years of association with UNESCO-CEPES, first as one of its liaison officers and then as a member of its advisory board. Asserts that the Centre has played--and still plays--a key role in East-West cooperation in higher education. Calls for…

Chairman of the Steering Committee for Higher Education and Research of the Council of Europe focuses on cooperation between UNESCO-CEPES and the Council of Europe, pointing out that central building blocks of the Bologna Process are results of this cooperation. (EV)

Summarizes the conference proceedings, asserting that two fundamental questions were addressed: "How can international cohesion be achieved without also reducing diversity?" and "How can collateral damage to local higher education systems be avoided?" (EV)

Discussion asserts that Romania recognizes the crucial importance of higher education's role in the development of the knowledge society of the twenty-first century, the importance of university education for the training of young people, and the need to develop Romanian higher education according to the norms of the Bologna Process and of…

Romania's prime minister evokes the role of UNESCO-CEPES as a forum for discussion of the principal issues of higher education. The pre-1989 activities of the Centre are compared to the post-1989 ones and to the role of the Centre in supporting the general reform of higher education in Central and Eastern Europe. (EV)