Maria Kelo Boeken

European higher education has long attracted international students from within the region and beyond. A strong tradition of intra-European mobility in recent decades is now being complemented by an energetic effort to expand the enrolment of non-European students, a key element in the overall European push to strengthen the competitive position of Europe’s higher education sector. By most accounts, this is an exciting development, but it also raises many important questions. Most fundamentally, what do non-European students – notably those who are coming to Europe for full-degree programmes rather than short-term exchange experiences – need from their host institutions in order to succeed? Are the institutions receiving these students delivering necessary information and support services in effective and appropriate ways? What constitutes good practice in this area, and what are the stakes for failing to get it right? International Student Support in European Higher Education addresses these and other highly pertinent issues, providing in the process concrete suggestions for practitioners and policymakers who are keen to ensure that the world’s internationally-mobile students view Europe as a destination for both academic excellence and care for the ‘whole student’.

2010 is an important date on the European calendar. It marks the first decade of advancement on the European Lisbon goals, i. e. making Europe a globally competitive knowledge-based economy - and in education policy terms, it is a significant benchmark for both the Education and Training 2010 agenda and the higher education reforms related to the Bologna Process. However, many of the goals of these processes will not be wholly accomplished across Europe by the established timeframe, despite the ambitions and efforts. What will be the hot issues in the next years, and what current challenges will persist well into the next decade? And where is European higher education heading? The articles of this volume attempt to provide a number of responses to these questions through scrutiny of themes that will not lose their centrality at the end of this decade: student mobility, alternative delivery of international education, funding of higher education, and the impact of labour market changes on higher education. The articles in this volume are based on concept papers or presentations prepared for the ACA Conference Beyond 2010, held in Tallinn in June 2008.

In the increasing global competition for the best students, the quality and attractiveness of an institution does no longer depend only on its academic, teaching and research standards: services to students have come to play an important role in the quality assessment and thus competitiveness of institutions. But what services should be available? How to respond to the needs and expectations of international students in particular? Who should provide support for them and how should it be organised? This study presents a number of models of good practice in service provision and university preparation of international students in a selection of countries. These examples form the basis for categorising and analysing a variety of service and preparatory programme models, with the aim of informing discussions in different national and institutional contexts when deliberating on the development of international student support

Today, Europe is a wealthy continent. But tomorrow, it could be much poorer. An unfavourable demographic development, the high price of labour, and relentless competition from old and new competitors threaten Europe's comfortable position. To counterbalance these dangers, Europe has adopted the Lisbon Strategie. It sets Europe the aim of becoming a world ledader in innovation adn knowledge creation. Alongside with further knowledge producers, universities and oterh higher education institutions have a key role in making the Lisbon Strategy work. However, their present state, Europe's universities are ill-equipped to become innovation engines. In order to pay this role, they themselves need to change. They need more funds than they have today, they need better governance structures, and they must enhance their global appeal. THese issues - governance, funding and international attractiveness of Europe's universities - are key concerns to this book. The volume also depicts the main outlines of the Lisbon Strategy. Most of the contributions in this volume are based on presentations delivered at the ACA conference „The future of the Univerity“, held in Vienna in December 2005.

The international mobility of students has considerably gained ground as a major policy in Europe over the last decades. As a result of the heightened political importance attached to international mobility, and the manifold practical attempts to increase it, there is an enhanced need for comprehensive, up-to-date, and reliable information on the phenomenon: statistical data on mobility are needed to measure progress - or otherwise - towards the various mobility goals and thus to inform the political actors of the impact of the programmes and other measures launched. however, data measuring real mobility (as opposd to foreign nationality) is not always available and is rarely sufficiently differentiated. This publication has therefore a double objective. First, it investigates which data on international mobility are being compiled and made available and which are not, both at the international, the natinal and the programme level. Second, this study presents in one volume the student mobility data identified, and - based on an analysis of these data - it tries to depict a picture of the main trends in international student mobility into and out of 32 European countries. Next to analysing and prsenting the availability and quality of data on intrnational student mobility, this report also makes recommendations for the improvement of student mobility statistics both at national and international level.