European Embeddedness and the Founding of Luxembourg’s 21st Century Research University

in European Journal of Higher Education (2021)

At the heart of Western Europe and culturally embedded in the “Greater Region,” Luxembourg for centuries sent its youth abroad for tertiary education, without its own national university. Evolving ... [more ▼]

At the heart of Western Europe and culturally embedded in the “Greater Region,” Luxembourg for centuries sent its youth abroad for tertiary education, without its own national university. Evolving provisions of postsecondary education after 1945 followed construction of several teaching and research institutes that did not offer full-fledged tertiary education certification. With global higher education expansion and European developments providing a window of opportunity, the critical juncture occurred in 2003, with the founding of the national flagship University of Luxembourg (uni.lu)—since leading to an extraordinary case of university institutionalization. Traditions were explicitly maintained, but reshaped, in the new university, with student mobility continuing to bolster the national elite’s pan-European networks and internationalization. Reflecting its hyper-diversity and multilingual culture as well as porous national borders, Luxembourg’s investments in higher education capacity-building, via a 21st century research university, have been thoroughly European. Today, Luxembourg has the highest proportion of workers with tertiary attainment and of internationally mobile students, testament to its maintained mobility tradition and national policy change facilitated by global models and European norms. [less ▲]

Laboratories of Reform? The Europeanization and Internationalization of Higher Education in Central and Eastern Europe

in European Journal of Higher Education (2015), 5(1), 1-17

This introductory article deals with higher education (HE) transformations in Central and Eastern Europe in the context of democratization and globalization. The authors first briefly survey the wider ... [more ▼]

This introductory article deals with higher education (HE) transformations in Central and Eastern Europe in the context of democratization and globalization. The authors first briefly survey the wider canvas of reform since 1989, particularly probing the extent to which the countries of the region may be treated as a distinctive or a cohesive group. Diverging experiences with communism, international organizations and the European Union are highlighted, while attention is also focused on the differing degrees of marketization exhibited by academic systems across the region. Yet, notwithstanding such differences, it is clear that the countries of the region emerge as distinctive ‘laboratories of reform’, privileged sites for understanding the interplay of external and domestic influences in the reshaping of the HE sector. Drawing on the findings of our contributors, the second part of the article then turns to understanding the domestic mediation of the processes of Europeanization and internationalization, identifying a series of key factors broadly discussed in terms of structures, norms and actors. This special issue thus aims to refine our understanding of HE transformations and internationalization in a post-authoritarian context. It further contributes more generally to debates on Europeanization and policy transfer in the field. [less ▲]