Session Information
22 SES 09 C, Policy, Management and Governance in Higher Education
Paper Session
Contribution
The purpose of our paper is to analyze the creation and implementation of quality criteria for cross-border higher education between Finland and Russia. The starting point of the paper is that higher education exchange, including cross-border provision, between Finland and Russia have rapidly expanded, which has created needs to establish new types of rules and soft laws to monitor quality of higher education in these two countries. There is a growing amount of studies into Russian and Finnish education systems and a rich number of analyses of recent higher education management reforms in both countries (e.g. Dneprov 2003; Johnson 2010; Tomperi 2009; Vanttaja 2010). There is also a large paper on development of quality assurance of curriculum planning in Finland and Russia (Turku University 2009), which has inspired us to extend our analysis into the areas of quality management and cross-border provision of higher education.
In our previous paper (Kallo & Semchenko 2010), we covered the main historical and legal trajectories of the Finnish and Russian higher education management and financing in the European context. In this paper, the main focus lies in analysing the recent reforms in the areas of quality management in Finland and Russia and cross-border provision of higher education between these countries. We will start our analysis by contextualising the recent stages of higher education legislation in order to highlight some main historical and current trajectories in Finnish higher education management. We are especially interested in understanding the latest reforms that concern internationalization of higher education and related quality criteria in Russia and Finland in the 1990s and the 2000s. Equally, we are interested in supranational soft laws that are used to legitimize those reforms. Finally, we will analyze the Cross-Border University (CBU) as a case study on the transfer of the OECD/UNESCO Guidelines for quality provision in cross-border higher education (2005) from the supranational to national and local level. The Cross-Border University is a consortium of ten universities (4 Finnish, 6 Russian) which has been developed in collaboration between Finnish and Russian authorities and which is aimed to be developed as an “internationally renowned and attractive concept” in the future (Ministry of Education 2009).
As the previous research on the impact of international organizations indicates (Dale 2006; Henry et al 2001; Robertson 2006), different supranational organizations, like WTO, the EU and the OECD, have had significant political leverage on defining the principles of internationalization of higher education, trading in educational services and related quality criteria. Those organizations use different types of soft laws which are ‘rules of conduct’ which may have legal and policy effects. (Senden 2004; Schäfer 2006.) Guidelines for quality provision in cross-border higher education (OECD/UNESCO 2005) provide one example of those soft laws, which have been adopted and translated into practice in several member countries like Finland and Russia.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Boeije, H. 2010. Analysis in Qualitative Research. Sage: Los Angeles. Bolotov, V.A. 1997. The Reform of Education in New Russia: a background report for the OECD Review of Russian Education, ISRE Newsletter, 6(1), 4-20, and 6(2), 9-62. Dale, R. 2006. Policy relationships between supranational and national scales; Imposition/resistance or parallel universes? In Kallo, J. & R. Rinne (eds.). Supranational regimes and national education policies. Encountering challenge, 27-49. Finnish Educational Research Association. Research in Educational Sciences 24. Turku: Painosalama. “Dnevnik Obshchego sobraniia RAN.” Vestnik RAN, 2005, vol. 75, no. 10, pp. 875–79. FINHEEC 2009. Korkeakoulujen arviointineuvoston vahvistama auditointiaikataulu vuosille 2005-2010. Henry, M., B. Lingard, F. Rizvi & S. Taylor. 2001. The OECd, globalisation and education policy. Amsterdam: Published for IAU Press, Pergamon. Johnson, D. (ed.) 2010. Politics, Modernisation and Educational Reform in Russia from past to present. Oxford studies in comparative education. OECD/UNESCO. 2005. Guidelines for quality provision in cross-border higher education. Paris: OECD. Robertson, S. 2006. Absences and imaginings: the production of knowledge on globalisation and education. Globalisation, Societies and Education 4(2), 303–318. The Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation on August 5, 2008 № 583 «On introduction of new systems of remuneration of employees of the federal budgetary institutions and federal government agencies» Schäfer, A. 2006. Resolving deadlock: Why international organisations introduce soft law. European Law Journal 12(2), 194–208. Senden, L. 2004. Soft law in European Community law. Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing. Tomperi, T. (ed.) 2009. Akateeminen kysymys? Yliopistolain kritiikkiä ja kiista uudesta yliopistosta. Tampere: Vastapaino. Turku University. 2009. Quality Handbook of Higher Education in Finland and Russia. Turku: Painosalama. Vanttaja, M. 2010. Yliopiston villit vuodet. Suomalaisen yliopistolaitoksen muutoksia ja uudistuksia 1990-luvulta 2000-luvun alkuun. Turku: Turun yliopiston kasvatustieteiden tiedekunnan julkaisuja.
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