Higher Education in Europe - beyond 2010

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Higher education institutions are being subjected to a variety of pressures that seek, primarily, to enhance higher education’s contribution to the successful creation of so-called ‘knowledge societies’, together with, and receiving only slightly less emphasis, the achievement of greater equity and social justice.

The report Higher Education Looking Forward: An Agenda for Future Research has examined the relevant higher education research literature in terms of its underlying conceptual approaches and empirical findings across a number of selected sub-themes (see below) in order to derive a future research agenda that will address scientific questions of long term strategic concern to the future of higher education.

The five themes that have been addressed are:

Higher education and the needs of the knowledge society
Key questions within this theme will be the adequacy of human capital theory in explaining changing relationships between higher education and work, the balance between initial formation and continuing professional development in knowledge-based economies, and the division of labour between higher education institutions and employers in meeting education and training needs.

Higher education and the achievement of equity and social justice
Key questions here concern the relationship between higher education’s roles in social reproduction and its roles in extending opportunities for social mobility and the achievement of greater social justice.

Higher education and its communities: interconnections and interdependencies
Key questions will concern whether new function can be performed without detriment to the old and what are the change mechanisms within higher education institutions and systems needed to bring about effective realignments between higher education and its various communities

Steering and governance of higher education
Key questions for this theme are to do with the implications of different forms of decision-making, accountability and funding for higher education’s ability to perform existing and new functions.

Differentiation and diversity of institutional forms and professional roles
The questions raised within theme five relate to the preceding themes and to whether further differentiation within national systems will be accompanied by greater convergence between systems if higher education is to respond effectively to changing social and economic climates in European countries

Download the whole report for or see the Project Summary a quick overview .

World Trade Report 2008: Trade in a Globalizing World

The World Trade Organisation released the World Trade Report 2008 last week.

The theme of this year's Report is “Trade in a Globalizing World”. The Report provides a reminder of what we know about the gains from international trade and highlights the challenges arising from higher levels of integration.

It addresses a range of interlinking questions, starting with a consideration of what constitutes globalization, what drives it, what benefits does it bring, what challenges does it pose and what role does trade play in this world of ever-growing inter-dependency.

The Report asks why some countries have managed to take advantage of falling trade costs and greater policy-driven trading opportunities while others have remained largely outside international commercial relations.





It also considers who the winners and losers are from trade and what complementary action is needed from policy-makers to secure the benefits of trade for society at large.





In examining these complex and multi-faceted questions, the Report reviews both the theoretical gains from trade and empirical evidence that can help to answer these questions.

Online advertising in EU surges 40%

The Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe) has just released the findings of its annual advertising expenditure survey for the year ending December 2007.

Compiled by IAB Europe and then processed and analyzed by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), this report is the definitive guide to the size and value of the European online advertising industry.
In 2007 the European online advertising market was worth €11.2 billion, up four billion euros from €7.2 billion in 2006. With a like-for-like growth rate of 40%, the European online advertising market shows signs of closing the gap on the US which grew 26% to a market value of €14.5 billion in the same period. (Chart 1 - click on the picture to make it bigger)

“10 before 10”
The report also reveals the share that online advertising has of the total advertising spend in key markets (Chart 2). Alain Heureux, President of IAB Europe says “We are well on the way to achieving the “10 before 10”- that is 10 European countries where online advertising accounts for at least 10% of overall ad spend by the year 2010. At the end of 2007 Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Poland Sweden and the UK had all reached this milestone.”

What’s an Internet user worth to an advertiser?
IAB Europe/PwC have created a measure ‘Spend per user’ to illustrate the value of one Internet user to an advertiser in the different markets. With the European average at €80.6, Norwegian advertisers spent the most at €133.2 per person, followed by the UK at €120.8 and Denmark at €109.5 in 2007. In the US advertisers spent €91.9 per person in 2007. The more mature the market, the higher the value placed on the Internet user by the advertisers.

The big category spenders
Industry category data has been included in the report for the first time and reveals that the sectors investing the most in online advertising in 2007 were Entertainment & Leisure, Telecoms and Finance & Insurance. In particular, advertisers from the Entertainment & Leisure sector, which spends the most money at present, have taken advantage of the interactive and social media formats on the web to promote their products and services.