Suchergebnisse

Higher education in Europe today faces many challenges (amongst others, the Bologna process). These challenges are related to the changing nature of the polity in which higher education is situated, In this article, we look at this polity - that is, the European Union - from a multi-level governance perspective. First we explain what a multi-level governance perspective means. Then we describe the evolution of the higher education policy of the EU in the light of both grand institutional changes and the daily practices of governance in the EU, We point out the elements that indicate the multi-level governance character of the EU. The EU emerges as a flexible, variable polity in which supranational institutions play an autonomous role.

The "Journal of Sociology" (Tijdschrift voor Sociologie), the only scientific sociological journal in Flanders, celebrates its 25th birthday. In these 25 years, the Journal has encountered many difficulties: too little money, too few submitted articles, too much delay in publishing the issues, ... But at the same time, it brought about cooperation between the universities in Flanders, created opportunities for sociologists to meet, and developed a culture in which critical comments by peers became more accepted. In this article, we present the history of the Journal of Sociology. First, we take a look at the predecessors of the Journal, that is, the research and training institutes, the associations, ... that created the climate in which the Journal could develop. Then we describe the creation of the Journal itself: what were the goals and how were they to be reached? Finally, we follow the evolution of the journal, the difficulties it encountered, the Solutions that were sought, the results that were reached.

Higher education in Flanders has seen some major changes in the 1990s. One of the key elements of the new higher education regulations was the quality assessment system. This exemplified best the government's policy of granting all institutions of higher education autonomy, making them responsible for their policies, while still keeping the quality of higher education somewhat under governmental control. In this article, we focus on the tension between the government's aim of improving and controlling the quality of higher education and universities ' concern for their autonomy. We describe the Flemish government's view on issues of quality in higher education and confront these with an account on the basis of case studies of how the quality assurance system was actually implemented in universities. We conclude that the model of the "market state" or the "evaluative state" is only realised partially in Flanders. The government is still interventionist when it comes to key policy issues