2nd Central European Higher Education Cooperation (CEHEC) Conference Proceedings

The 2016 CEHEC conference focuses on three main themes: 1) Management and governance This theme will look into topics related to the relationship between the state and institutions, higher education reforms, policy adoption and implementation, the governance and management of universities, models of higher education institutions and students’ organisations and their impact. 2) Societal relevance. Under this theme we will discuss the understanding by various actors of how higher education can be made more relevant to the society, and how to close the gap between theory and practice. The presentations will cover a wide range of topics including university branding, role of university managers in student recruitment, the social effects of massification of higher education, life-long learning programs, skills building for the labour market, student mobility patterns and retention increasing practices. 3) Research and development policy in the CEE region and its impact on universities Most higher education institutions from the CEE region do not score very high in global rankings based on scientific achievements and at the same time underperform in the competition for European Union research grants. This theme focuses on addressing this “lagging behind” by looking into research and development policies, the development of research cultures, the accreditation framework and the European quality standards.