Symposium Overview

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An EHEA Primer
Press Release 18 March 2005

The globalization of higher education and research has become a high profile issue at a range of scales. Vigorous debates are underway about issues from the implications for education of the implementation of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), to trans-Atlantic competition for research-oriented faculty and resources, to model curricula and pedagogical practices that might engender more cosmopolitan and creative citizens.

One of the outcomes of the impact of globalization on higher education and research is the drive to create new "knowledge spaces" at a range of scales. Examples include global university consortia such as the Worldwide Universities Network or Universitas 21, the European Higher Education Area, Brand New Zealand, the Singapore Global Schoolhouse and so on. Many of these knowledge spaces are being constructed and governed in a transnational sense, both with respect to the context in which these spaces are being framed and situated, and also with respect to the institutions that effectively construct and govern these spaces. For example, the Singapore Global Schoolhouse is a knowledge space that is being constructed in the context of competition between countries for foreign investment in the services sector, competition for internationally mobile students and faculty, the perceived need to create more entrepreneurial and reflexive Singaporeans, and the need to discursively position Singapore as a creative "knowledge-based" economy. In practice this new knowledge space is being constructed by the Singaporean state in alliance with the 10-15 foreign universities (e.g., Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, INSEAD, MIT) that have established relatively deep commercial presences in this Southeast Asian city-state since 1998.

In the context of debates about globalization and education, and especially the construction of new knowledge spaces in a globalizing context, we are hosting a two day symposium on one of the more fascinating and complex knowledge spaces that is emerging - the European Higher Education Area. The European Higher Education Area is the outcome of recent attempts at a number of levels to "create a European space for higher education in order to enhance the employability and mobility of citizens and to increase the international competitiveness of European higher education" (Bologna Declaration, 1999).

More specifically, the objective for this symposium is to generate debate about the nature, scope, form and tensions associated with the construction of the European higher education area, and its role in powering the creation of a competitive and "cohesive" Europe. As implied above it will be useful to highlight how this new European knowledge space is being constructed and governed in a transnational sense, both with respect to the context in which this space is being framed and situated, and also with respect to the institutions that effectively construct and govern this space. It will also be useful to incorporate discussion about issues such as institutional capacity, and factors such as "leadership", in providing the momentum to construct new knowledge spaces.

Co-organizers, Constructing Knowledge Spaces:

Kris Olds (University of Wisconsin-Madison) olds@geography.wisc.edu and Susan Robertson (University of Bristol), s.l.robertson@bristol.ac.uk