The importance of generic skills for life scientists is commonly recognised by employers, graduates, and higher education institutes. As it remains unclear which generic skills are relevant for different life sciences career paths, this study aims to give an overview to inform and inspire universities and students, by analysing 179 Dutch…

This paper analyses the nature and complexity that characterize the broader policy and political conditions of teachers' initial learning within and across three different national settings. Drawing upon the transnational notion of 'fast policy', we show how neoliberal policies and associated policy artefacts constitute specific, national initial…

England has a 'pre-qualification' system of higher education admissions, where applications and offers are made to young people before exam results are received. While in most cases offers are conditional on achieving a grade target in A Level exams, recent years have seen an exponential growth in 'unconditional offers', where the offer of a place…

The need for employees in the exact and natural sciences sector with both work experience and academic qualifications, especially combined with an entrepreneurial mindset, is rising. The University of Groningen offers an alternative Master's program entitled Science, Business and Policy (SBP). SBP combines entrepreneurship education with the…

Purpose: This paper aims to understand the development track of skills mismatch research and discover the hidden internal connections between literature. Design/methodology/approach: The authors gathered data through scientometric quantitative analysis using CiteSpace. Specifically, this article applied basic analysis, journal cocitation analysis…

"Public-Private Partnerships for Skills Development" discusses the concept of public-private partnership (PPP) and its application in the domain of skills development. Volume I proposes a three-dimension typology of PPPs for skills development, and identifies common elements and governance characteristics of these PPPs. Volume II…

Interest in higher education institutions (HEIs) as instruments for development has increased in recent years. The main objective of this paper is to address the contribution of HEIs to development through their missions, models, and challenges. With this purpose, we perform a historical analysis and characterise higher-education systems through…

One of the causes of the science teacher shortage is the low enrollment in science teacher education. In the Netherlands, science undergraduates can enroll in a half-year teaching course that leads to a teacher qualification for junior secondary education. The goal is that these undergraduates continue in teacher education to obtain a full…

This study examines whether the expansion in higher education over the past 20 years has contributed to better education-job matches on the labour market. In particular, we relate changes in the average formal schooling level of workers on the regional labour market to the educational attainment of the recruited staff within companies operating on…

The increasing availability of non-formal education in the form of Open Education Resources (OERs) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) gives rise to the questions of how such education can be formally recognized for credit. Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR), and Qualification Frameworks are fields of practice actively engaged in…

This annex to the main report "Promoting the Relevance of Higher Education" includes the international policy literature study and the review of indicators. The objective of the literature study was to provide first insights into the policies that relate to the three dimensions of higher education relevance: personal development,…

While postdoctoral researchers (postdocs) are an increasingly important and productive group of employees in academia, they lack further career prospects and embeddedness within their organizations. This paper provides a rare glimpse into this relatively unexplored but important group. A comparative study of two Dutch universities included a…

This report aims to provide insight into the realities faced by higher education academic staff at a time of fast-moving change and increasing societal demand. Fluctuating student numbers, new funding and steering mechanisms are among the features of today's European higher education landscape, but not enough is known about how academic staff are…

This study addresses qualifications at level 5 of the European qualifications framework (EQF) in 15 countries (Belgium (Flanders), the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, France, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, the United Kingdom (EWNI and Scotland) that had linked their national…

In the Netherlands, university programs increasingly use the binding study advice (BSA) to select students after the first year. Students with insufficient progress after the first year and who therefore do not conform to pre-defined BSA norms have to quit their program. This study investigated whether the introduction of the BSA is associated…