e-MaHE

Find Us in Alumniportal Deutschland!

eduardo — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:23:01 +0000

All MAHE students, alumni and friends are invited to be part of Alumniportal Deutschland and to integrate our community.

The Alumniportal Deutschland is web-service free of charge aimed at stimulating networking and career development. On this site you will find world-wide events and training-initiatives, job offers from different regions, tips and information about the German language as well as news and thematic articles. At the heart of the portal is its community, where you can establish, secure and maintain contacts to professionals of higher education and other fields of study.
The portal offers “Germany-Alumni” an opportunity to secure and expand your contacts and expertise, and to use them for your personal and professional development.

How can you join?
Simply register and start contacting other alumni worldwide through forums, blogs and many other channels. After registration you can visit the section “Community”, click the item “Groups”, search for our group named: “MAHE - Higher Education Research and Development” and join the group.
The main objective is to stimulate cooperation between MAHE students and alumni, connecting international and multidisciplinary professionals that can share and exchange relevant information about projects, conferences, call for papers, publications, job options and personal experiences.
For these reasons your registration in the Alumniportal Deutschland can be a useful tool to establish contacts within our community as well as with other higher education professionals.

Follow this link to register , or, you can know more at the Alummniportal website:

Natalia Orellana: Background and rationals of the Biennial of Higher Education and the World of Work in Chile.

eduardo — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:30:35 +0000

The INCHER-Kassel master student is responsible for the project that created the I Biennial of Higher Education and the World of Work in Chile. A major inter-collaborative forum of higher education institutions held in the Sudamerican country. Prof. Ulrich Teichler is the international expert to give the opening speech.

Kassel, Germany.- As a consequence of the academic process derived by the modules “Project Management” (Oldenburg University) and “Transition to Higher Education to the World of Work “(Kassel University), the MAHE at INCHER-Kassel student, Natalia Orellana Galarce, created and organized a pioneer higher education event in Chile.
The “Biennial” is a collaborative forum of higher education institutions and its career services that received support from DAAD-Santiago, Chile; INCHER-Kassel, UNILEAD-Oldenburg, and is financing by the MECESUP programme of the Chilean Ministry of Education, being organized by an alliance between two Chilean universities.

How was the “Bienal” project conceived?

“In April 2010, I was collecting data about Placement Centers and Placement Activities for a research entitled What Chilean higher education providers are doing organizationally to support the transition process from higher education to employment, an academic assignment for my master’s programme in higher education research at Kassel University.

During that process, I established contact with several Chilean career services and alumni offices to survey them, in order to characterize the strategic directions and types of services offered by their unit of services. The Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (USM) was launching they Placement Center, thus they were very interested in contributing and participating in my study. Therefore we started a collaborative relationship.
I prepared a draft based on a plan for project management to be presented in the UNILEAD programme at Oldenburg University in September 2010. The project consisted of the creation of a Biennial of Higher Education and the World of Work (Bienal de Educación Superior y Mundo del Trabajo) to be organized by the recently launched USM Placement Center. The response of the university was positive, then I designed the details and structure of the “Biennial” at Oldenburg University and I sent it to USM for its assessment, comments and discussions in September 2010”.

What is the “Bienal” rational?

-“The establishment of an inter-institutional mechanism of collaboration aimed to promoting innovation and professionalization in higher education. In the context of the binary, highly privatized, expensive and competitive Chilean higher education system the emphasis is located in quality and value-added (in terms of services and quality in general) to improve institutional competitiveness, in a system characterized by a lack of inter-institutional collaborative initiatives”.

¿What are the main objectives of this event?
-“The initiative is aimed to configure a space for inter-institutional collaboration, exchange of experiences and good practices to stimulate the professionalization in higher education management of alumni and career services, as well as to explore the variety of institutional responses with regard to the relationship between higher education and the world of work”.

What is going to be your participation in the event?

-“I will present the result of an exploratory study about strategic directions of transition services in Chile. The idea is to analyze patterns of professionalization and organizational alignments within the wide variety of career services, as well as its challenges and trends”.

The first version of the Biennial of Higher Education and the World of Work consists of two days of activity to be held on March 15-16, 2011. The thematic structure will be introduced by international and local speakers, and the event will include seminars and workshops with the aim to foster exchange and share front-line knowledge and practices. It will also include a posterior publication to address the presentations, conclusions, debates of the activity. MAHE professor, Ulrich Teichler is the visiting international expert.
More information about the Bienal de Educación Superior y Mundo del Trabajo: in this link , or, you can know more at the “Bienal” website:

The European University Association publishes a new report on the financial sustainability of European universities.

eduardo — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:55:38 +0000

A report published today, feb 22nd, by The European University Association (EUA) deals with the important issue of the financial sustainability of European universities.
The report “Financially Sustainable Universities II: European Universities Diversifying Income Sources” is based on an online survey completed by more than 150 universities in 27 countries. The report underlines that European universities need both sufficient resources, and a long-term planning horizon to invest in their future academic and research activities, and thus to continue fulfilling their role in society.
The report gives a detailed description of how European universities are currently financed, and looks into the sector’s expectations for future evolutions. It also analyses the many different barriers currently preventing universities from pursuing additional income streams (considering internal challenges and external regulatory barriers) and the possible drivers for stimulating income diversification. Importantly, the study reveals that additional funding sources cannot replace sufficient public funding. It concludes with a series of recommendations for creating more sustainable funding models for the future.

You can read the EUA press release here, or you can visit the EUA website:

More programs taught in English in European Universities evidence new problems.

eduardo — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 14:02:57 +0000

As universities across Europe offer more programs in English to attract an international student body and raise their international profiles, the growing pains are becoming evident. Some students complain that their professors’ language skills are not classroom-ready. Some professors complain that their students, many of whom come from different countries and cultures, aren’t adapting well to their new environment. The number of programs taught in English at universities in European countries where English is not the native language has tripled over the past five years, to more than 2,400, according to a publication by the Brussels-based Academic Cooperation Association, ACA.

You can know more in The Chronicle of Higher Education. .

Robert Owino Odera, Fellow of the AGGN Network

tamoeta — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 06:00:59 +0000

The African Good Governance Network (AGGN) recently selected Robert as a fellow in the network.

Driven by the “desire to inspire growth and development of his home country”, as he describes the reason of starting his master programme in higher education on his e-MaHE community page, for long time Robert was especially interested in the role of higher education in development third world countries and in the development of governance policies on higher education.

About his nomination for the Good Governance Network he says:
„I feel honoured to have been nominated by the university for The African Good Governance Network Fellowship and am glad to have been chosen into the network. I believe that there are great opportunities yet to be harnessed in Africa through advocating for good governance because the efforts have a better chance of causing change as governance touches on all sectors of a country. I hope to use this opportunity to engage at a discursive level for such possibilities for the whole of Africa“. (Source: INCHER-Kassel)

We congratulate Robert and wish him success in achieving all his dreams!

Read more about the nomination and about AGGN on the homepage of INCHER-Kassel here.

New Article on e-MaHE!

admin — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 20:28:20 +0000

We’ve got a new article for you:

15. The effects of non-formal education on professional success.
An analysis of student NGOs

by Carmen Muresan

Carmen writes about the professional success of graduates formerly active in student NGOs.

“Active engagement in student NGOs during studies has a positive effect on the professional success of the graduates. Graduates are more likely to take responsibilities and have initiative on their work place, what makes them feel confident and trust their knowledge baggage they bring from their studies. Often the activity in student NGOs is seen as complementary to the formal education student receive in their study programmes, therefore the practical skills developed in NGOs added to the knowledge acquired during the course of study gives them the whole package for a good start of their work and a quick adjustment to the new situation. Additional soft skills like proactivity, action, interaction, creativity (bring different solutions to old problems), intrinsic motivation, mastership, high aims, responsibility as well as the “personal tendency” towards developing certain skills is a “bonus” for further professional development on the job.”

“The student NGO environment is the so called nursery of tomorrow’s leaders and entrepreneurs. They are those people that have, somehow in their genetic code, the abilities and qualities the society needs for growth and development, (…) those people which are going to change the society” (Atanasiu & Olteanu, 2010, min.19:30)

Carmen Muresan is student in MAHE since 2007. Please find out more about Carmen`s research interest in the Community page.

Please check the paper out on our Articles page or download it directly –> here.

Enjoy reading it!

Indonesia: More budget for natural sciences, but not enough.

eduardo — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 07:30:54 +0000

The Indonesian ministry of National Education has tripled the state university research budget for the current academic year in a drive to widen the field. Whether this will bring in more undergraduate natural science students remains a central point.
Indonesia’s new academic year, just beginning, has again exposed the inadequacy of the country’s higher education provision in the natural sciences. Few universities are offering such undergraduate courses, and the paucity of undergraduates in the natural sciences is reflected further up the higher education ladder in a lack of research students.
Meanwhile, a number of universities fight against the odds to strengthen the natural sciences in the country. Notable among them are the University of Indonesia with its Biodiversity Centre, Hasanuddin University in Makassar from which village-centred coastal conservation and regeneration programmes have been run, and Brawijaya University in Malang, East Java, with interests in agro-forestry.

You can read more in University World News. .

German universities:50,000 additional students next year.

eduardo — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 07:30:59 +0000

The German defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg’s military reform plan aims to modernise the Bundeswehr by cutting compulsory military service to create a smaller, more efficient professional force. This would mean an end to the Zivildienst public service programme, where young men choose to work in social and community facilities instead of joining the Bundeswehr.
The head of Germany’s state education affairs conference (KMK), Ludwig Spaenle, thinks that “This could mean that in 2011 universities will have to take on an additional 50,000 students.”

You can read a short note in The Local. .

UNITRACE 2010: Tracer Training offered by INCHER-Kassel

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:00:33 +0000

INCHER-Kassel is hosting this week the first workshop of the DIES Training Course “UNIVERSITY GRADUATES’ TRACER STUDY COURSE (UNITRACE)”

The training, constisting of 3 workshops over the duration of 1½ years, is targeted to people from higher education institutions who will be responsible for realizing graduate tracer studies. 22 participants from South East Asia, Eastern Africa and Central America will be enabled to conduct professional tracer studies in their home countries (Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam; Ethiopia, Kenya; Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua).
Furthermore, participants will be trained in the freeware software QTAFI, a key tool developed by INCHER-Kassel to prepare questionnaires, online-surveys, tables and figures for professional tracer surveys.

This first workshop will take place from October 11th – October 22nd, 2010 and will focus on the graduate survey preparation: relevant theories, design of the survey, identification of mailing addresses of the graduates, organization of the field work, methods to achieve a high response rate.

For additional information please read the training description here or contact the training coordinator: Harald Schomburg

The press release in German language is available on the INCHER website

Successes in Achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals

tamoeta — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 08:00:37 +0000

In his recent talk at TED*, Hans Rosling reframes 10 years of UN data with his spectacular visuals, lighting up an astonishing — mostly unreported — piece of front-page-worthy good news: We’re winning the war against child mortality! Along the way, he debunks one flawed approach to stats that blots out such vital stories.

Hans Rosling, doctor and researcher, began his wide-ranging career as a physician, spending many years in rural Africa tracking a rare paralytic disease (which he named konzo) and discovering its cause: hunger and badly processed cassava. He co-founded Médecins sans Frontièrs (Doctors without Borders) Sweden, wrote a textbook on global health, and as a professor at the Karolinska Institut in Stockholm initiated key international research collaborations. He’s also personally argued with many heads of state, including Fidel Castro.

* TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts.