This article describes how an international education component for an Advertising and Society course was developed and taught for undergraduate students through a virtual collaboration between American and Dutch universities. The creation and implementation of a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project for a major requirement…

Among pioneering European countries who started to establish a formal higher education quality assurance system in the 1980s, the Netherlands adopted one based on peer review and quality enhancement, which was replaced in 2003 by an accountability-oriented accreditation system under the substantial influence of the Bologna Process. Recently, the…

Wiljan van den Akker is a university professor, a respected academic administrator, and a published poet and writer. From a base at the Utrecht University, in the Netherlands, his three-decade long career spans three continents and includes one-on-one associations with Berkeley, UCLA and Oxford. Currently, he is the Vice-Rector for Research at…

Since its formal inception in 1976, EU cooperation in the field of education has known a number of major landmarks: the launch of the Erasmus programme in 1987, the inclusion of education for the first time in the Treaty (Maastricht, 1992) and, last but not least, the role given to education and training in the new EU 10-year economic and social…

This article reviews the history of higher education governance and funding in The Netherlands, generalising when possible to other European countries. It finds that governance reforms and the funding of higher education appear to be driven by economic and demographic factors, including massification. Furthermore, the Bologna Process can be…

The theoretical premise of this article is that policy is constructed and presented discursively. The Bologna process presents us with an example of such a policy construction process where the quality policy goals are set jointly in transnational settings, requiring different kinds of negotiations and discursive strategies. Discourse analysis of…

Analyzes the recent evolution in higher education linkages between northern and southern countries from individual academic projects toward broader development cooperation. Reviews different linkage programs in Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. Focuses on key issues concerning organization, procedures, and support mechanisms, and raises…

At the Lisbon summit in 2000 the European Council set the strategic goal of becoming the most dynamic and competitive region in the world within 10 years. One of the responses of the Dutch government to this ambition is to invest in vocational education. Strengthening vocational education in the Netherlands must result in a second main route into…

Discussion of research on computers in education in The Netherlands focuses on the development of a national plan for research. The organization of educational research in The Netherlands is explained, experimental programs among groups of schools are described, and research themes for the future are suggested. (six references) (LRW)

The Netherlands' Basic School Education Act mandated that nursery and primary schools be structurally integrated into "basic schools" for children aged four to twelve by 1984. Inservice training courses, called IVB, were set up to prepare nursery and primary teachers for the new system according to the professional goals of continuity,…

In the context of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), United Nations University (UNU) initiated the creation of a network of Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs) for Education for Sustainable Development. This paper describes the philosophy behind the activities performed by one of those RCEs, RCE Rhine-Meuse, an RCE…

This document presents an overview of the systems and procedures in place for certifying vocational qualifications in the Netherlands. Chapter 1 describes the following components of the Dutch education system: primary and special education; first phase of secondary education; second phase of secondary education; higher education; adult education;…

This book examines lifelong learning in the Information Age and the role of higher education (HE) in providing the educational services needed by lifelong learners. The following are among the topics discussed in the book's eight chapters: (1) changes in HE (repercussions of globalization in the educational sector; competition in higher learning;…