STUDENT MOBILITY IN THE EUROPE REGION: A STATISTICAL EVALUATION

Based on data taken from the Unesco Statistical Yearbook (1987), supplemented, for several countries, with data obtained from the Liaison Officers of CEPES or from other available sources, the article examines the statistics of student mobility in the Europe Region over the 1980‐1985 period. Special attention is given to the intra‐European flows of foreign students, and several trends in European student mobility are thus identified.     

ACADEMIC EXCHANGES: EXPERIENCE AND TRENDS

The coincidence that much of Eastern Europe is democratizing at the same time that much of Western Europe is moving towards greater integration gives the universities in both regions the chance to profit from both phenomena and to train their graduates in ways that will enable them to contribute to their further development. One of the best forms of preparation is student mobility. A listing of the perceived priorities and aims of student mobility is followed by a brief statement of the engagement of the Technical University of Budapest (TUB) in mobility and exchange activities.     

ACADEMIC VALUES AND SERVICE CONFLICTS

This article examines relationships among the values of service, truth, freedom, justice, and community. Service is the most important purpose of higher education. Other academic values can cloud or clarify this purpose. The article is based on the premise that clarification is preferable to confusion and that congruence is better than conflict. If a professor's values and actions are in conflict with service, then he might be ineffective and unethical. The author concludes that professors should value truth as a means for service to society, not as an end in itself. Freedom, too, is not an end. It protects the search for truth, not individual enterprise. Justice eliminates the excesses of freedom; it protects everyone with fairness. If justice is the guide for resolving individual conflicts, then community is the glue that bonds the academy together. Community makes fair service more imperative than selfishness.     

TYPES OF ACADEMIC EXCHANGES AND TARGET GROUPS: BALANCES AND IMBALANCES

The article considers, on one hand, the need to increase East‐West and West‐East academic exchanges in Europe, and on the other, to reduce or to rationalize imbalances. The three major segments of university populations, students, faculty members, and administrators, are each examined with regard to participation in exchanges, and pertinent suggestions are made. The author particularly insists on the importance of involving university administrators in exchange programmes even to the extent of moving them physically to other universities for stays of varying length. In closing, he evokes the setting up of the European Association of International Exchange Administrators.     

COLLABORATIVE EVALUATION RESEARCH: A CASE STUDY OF TEACHERS’ AND ACADEMIC RESEARCHERS’ TEAMWORK IN A SECONDARY SCHOOL

The article examines the processes and challenges involved in conducting participatory research and evaluation in schools, by looking at a case study of a collaborative evaluation research that was conducted in a secondary school in Israel by two researchers and three teachers. It describes the experiences of the research team while conducting the study, the processes that developed during this collaboration, and the kinds of knowledge that emerged over the two years of teamwork. It also describes the features of the relationships between the various individuals who participated in the study. Implications for evaluation in schools are presented.     

ACADEMIC FREEDOM: ITS NATURE, EXTENT AND VALUE

ABSTRACT:  Academic freedom does not refer to freedom to engage in any speech act, but to freedom to hold any belief and espouse it in an appropriately academic manner. This freedom belongs to certain institutions, rather than to individuals, because of their academic nature. Academic freedom should be absolute, regardless of any offence it may on occasion cause .     

HIGHER EDUCATION,MOBILITY AND LIFE OPPORTUNITIES

This article discusses what in the author's perspective are some of the most urgent aspects of certain questions which must necessarily be answered if one is to take seriously the basic ideas of the “One‐Europe” concept. As far as they concern institutions of higher education, they are first discussed in terms of the comparability of university degrees. For this purpose, the basic problem is stated with reference to two examples taken from Germany. Then the much more complicated situation involving many systems is sketched. It is not at all the intention of this article to recommend a strategy of “homogenization as far as possible”; however, it grapples with the reality that if graduates are to be able to obtain employment abroad, that is, to make a reality of international mobility, some system of comparability is urgently required. Another point raised refers to the effects of the constantly expanding educational sector on the opportunities of individuals and age cohorts, an aspect of the question which is frequently overlooked. Here the need for more information ‐ and planning according to the information received ‐ is obvious. The paper ends by suggesting certain changes in social conditions in order to improve opportunities for mobility.     

INDIVIDUAL ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND APROFESSIONAL ACTS

In this essay, Liviu Andreescu examines the question of whether a certain category of aprofessional acts by academics (in particular, political speech) deserves protection against academic sanctions under the principle of academic freedom. Andreescu discusses two alternative views of academic freedom (the extensive and the restrictive) providing different answers to the question. He then examines some of the arguments advanced by the proponents of the more recent, restrictive theory of academic freedom against the broader, traditional theory, which in recent times has been on the defensive. Andreescu ultimately suggests that the choice between the two definitions of academic freedom is a question of sound policy in specific institutional contexts, rather than a matter of conceptual consistency.     

BACKGROUND CHARACTERISTICS AS PREDICTORS OF ACADEMIC SELF-CONFIDENCE AND ACADEMIC SELF-EFFICACY AMONG GRADUATE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING STUDENTS

This study uses data from the 1995-96 Graduate Experience Project to explore differences among, and possible predictors of, academic self-confidence, academic self-efficacy, and outcome expectations of entering graduate students in science and engineering. The results suggest that at time of entry, women and U.S. minority graduate students entered with similar academic credentials and academic expectations as their Anglo male peers. Further, gender was not found to be a significant factor in predicting academic self-confidence, academic self-efficacy, or careerrelated outcome expectations. Rather, student perceptions of academic preparedness, status-related disadvantages, and expectations about faculty/student interactions emerged as significant predictors of academic self-efficacy and career-related outcome expectations.     

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND THE DIMINISHED SUBJECT

ABSTRACT:  Discussions about freedom of speech and academic freedom today are about the limits to those freedoms. However, these discussions take place mostly in the higher education trade press and do not receive any serious attention from academics and educationalists. In this paper several key arguments for limiting academic freedom are identified, examined and placed in an historical context. That contextualisation shows that with the disappearance of social and political struggles to extend freedom in society there has come a narrowing of academic life and a new and impoverished concept of 'academic freedom' for a diminished idea of the human subject, of humanity and of human potential .