The 21st EURASHE Annual Conference will bring together leaders in the field of Professional Higher Education for a comprehensive overview of this rapidly expanding area of research and development. The Conference will be held in Nice, France in March, 31 – April, 1 2011 at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie Nice in partnership with ADIUT-France. The Conference is traditionally a meeting of EURASHE’s individual and associate members, outside experts from a range of academic fields and stakeholders to construct a unique range of educational experiences of relevance to professionals from all geographical regions and sectors of European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and from outside the EHEA.

“This year’s conference is particularly important for professional higher education” said conference co-organiser and the Vice-President of the ADIUT Philippe Pierrot. “The IUTs (Instituts Universitaires de Technologie), which form an integrated part of the university system, focus on the professionally oriented programmes in France. These technological and commercial tracks within the university system, contribute to regional development and applied research. The other model that will be presented is the one of the Universities of Applied Sciences, which in many countries in Europe operate independently from the traditional universities, and play a role of their own in the knowledge transfer in the region where they operate.

One of the peculiarities of the IUTs is well-developed co-operation with other ‘regions’ in the world, such as Latin America, Africa and Asia. In addition to the growth in basic research activities related to professionally oriented programmes, we are also looking at the main features of ‘professionally oriented mobility’ outside the EHEA, with examples from the experience of the French IUTs, and other member associations of EURASHE, so as to give a varied picture of mobility in professional and vocational contexts. We would also like to underline the role which technological higher education plays in the policies of town and country planning and as tool mattering from accession in higher education for strata less favoured by society”. Over the next decade, European Professional Higher Education is expected to undergo a profound change because of the ‘Europe 2020 Strategy’. The two tracks of the conference will provide the input for some of the topics in EURASHE’s planned Bologna 2020 publication, based on ‘EURASHE’s Ten Commitments for the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in 2020 – Visions & Strategies’.

The conference will cover the topic of European Mobility in the global context, and the special role of professional Higher Education: higher interest in applied research, synergies through innovative role of placements; factors and conditions influencing the mobility flows and the position of the individual institution on the global market. Stefan Delplace, Secretary General of EURASHE, underlined that EURASHE would in this upcoming 21st conference pay attention to the unique position of one of its member organisations and compare their achievements to other models in European Higher Education. It will also be an outstanding occasion for EURASHE to develop and present its own involvement in a recently approved Erasmus Mundus project, in the Caribbean Islands, where there is a broad spectrum of professionally oriented institutions and programmes. In a third track of this conference, we will entirely focus on Quality Assurance on an institutional level. Firstly we take the opportunity to present and consult with our members and stakeholders on the actual use in the institutions of the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance, as part of a project funded by the European Commission, jointly with the European Universities Association (EUA), the European Students Union (ESU) and the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). Its aim is to evaluate the implementation and application of the ESG after their first five years in existence. The output of the project will be a report to ‘Bologna’ Ministers at their meeting in Bucharest in April 2012. Other workshops will focus on the obstacles for making joint programmes with foreign partner institutions, and the internal quality assurance of higher education institutions related to aspects that are often overlooked such as student guidance, work placements, and other issues that distinguish professional higher education.