INTERNATIONALISATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION: EUROPE’S VISION AND THE
ATTITUDES OF THE NETHERLANDS AND FLANDERS

dateMay 25, 2010
subject

Internationalisation of Higher
Education: Europe's vision andthe attitudes of the Netherlands

Europe is a very complicated continent. It has been the scene of two world wars and only
recently was witness of a bitter war within a number of Balkan countries. Through forming aEuropean Economic Community first (as of 1958) and by enlarging this Community into abroader political European Union later on, Europe tries to find a balance between theindividual ambitions and cultures of a large number of relatively small countries and thenecessity of forming a “block” to be able to play a role in the global competitive world.

and Flanders

Europe counts over 40 countries after the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. and former
Yugoslavia. With the exception of Russia, Germany, the UK, Italy, France, Spain and
Poland all these countries are relatively small, also the Netherlands (17 million inhabitants)
and Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium (6 million Flemish people out of a total of
10 million for Belgium as a whole)
By looking for economic and political cooperation Europe tries to weigh as heavily as
possible on global developments, but of course unification of all these separate interests isnot easy. That is why the Bologna-declaration of 1999 is so important: a harmonized degreesystem (bachelor-master-doctorate), external quality assurance, a diploma supplement, aEuropean Credit point system, Qualification Frameworks, all these measures contribute tothe ideal of forming a European Higher Education Area.
The Netherlands and Flanders are both heavily dependent on trade, transport and services.
Both regions are no autarky, because of the lack of sufficient oil, gas, gold or other raw
materials. For both regions internationalisation is of the utmost importance. That means thatin education attention has to be given to:– the international content of the curriculum;– knowledge of at least one foreign language, and preferably two or three;– mobility of staff and students;– acquiring international and intercultural competencies;
While Flanders experiences very strict language rules, the Netherlands are more open:
almost all master courses nowadays are offered in the English language, which is a majoradvantage for the attractiveness of Dutch H.E..
The NVAO plays an important role in European associations of quality assurance. Three ofthese have a European significance:

Information

K.L.L.M.Dittrich
070-3122304

page 2 of 2 –ENQA: the network of European Q.A.-agencies : plays a political role and stimulates
cooperation in procedures and methods.
– ECA: the European Consortium of Accreditation organisations: 17 organisations from 10
different countries with the aim of mutual recognition of accreditation results;– EQAR: the European Quality Assurance Register, a list of trustworthy European agencies
which perform their activities according to the European Standards and Guidelines.
NVAO is in the board of ENQA, is vice-president and coordinator of ECA, and is vicepresident of EQAR. This is evidence for the importance of internationalisation for The
Netherlands and Flanders and the HEI’s. The task of “internationalisation” was specifically
named in the Treaty in which the binational NVAO has been established.
In his presentation Karl Dittrich will discuss some developments for stimulating“internationalization”, in which the NVAO plays an important role, for instance:– the certificate for outstanding internationalization;– stimulating joint programmes and joint degrees and the quality assurance of these;– the “Qrossroad” project: a European dataset for accredited programmes;– mutual recognition of accreditation results;
Besides that NVAO will supply information on the way in which “internationalization” will beincluded in the evaluation of basic quality of programmes.