The Higher Education Conference 2016

Despite the importance and fluctuations of higher education as a sector, as research discipline, it is very diverse, fast growing through the massification of universities. This discipline is more practically than theoretically oriented, with only a small group of experienced researchers. It differs from other disciplines because of the few connections between the top EU-funded research and the broad bottom of empirical research. Higher education research within universities is located within a range of disciplines such as sociology, humanities, management studies, educational development and teacher training. Only a few established centers represent higher education research as a separate discipline. The focus on higher education research is limited in many countries. While the number of PhD’s in the field of higher education are increasing, their supervisors often do not have knowledge of higher education as a discipline. At the same time, policy makers are in need of new ideas for developing higher education, as well as evaluations of the current status quo. Therefore, it now time to develop new strategies for raising capacity in higher education, and enabling and further establishing closer links between the wider field of higher education research and its core stakeholders.

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