Elevating Higher Education public policies (HESPRI)

Implementation period: January 2023 – December 2026 

HESPRI addresses innovative strategies to strengthen public policies and improve the competitiveness of the HE sector, taking into considerations the two forces which shaped the current world of higher education (HE) – the humanistic traditions of university governance and the neo-liberal reforms of the past thirty years, and suggesting alternative actions to overcome some major crises, such as the tension between traditional and neo-liberal academic values; the biased evaluation and assessment of quality in higher education; the ineffectiveness determined by the distorted measurements of scientific achievements; the recent digital transformations of the universities facing the pandemic. Relying on a world-class and culturally diverse consortium, HESPRI aims to provide evidence-based recommendations for governments, policymakers and universities, to adjust various components of HE policies, in response to current challenges.

During the implementation period, IPRE’s experts will be engaged in 22 mobilities to partner universities and organisations, including: Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iasi, University of Strasbourg, Universita degli Studi di Torino, Justus-Liebig-Universitaet Giessen, Sorbonne Universite, Kokuritsu Daigaku Hojin Okayama Daigaku (Japan), Doshisha University (Japan), The Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (Kuwait), and Universidad Andres Bello (Chile). Moreover, 2 workshops addressing the digitalisation of the higher education system will be held in Chisinau by IPRE, in cooperation with other project partners.

Objectives of the project:

• Comparing a range of national higher education systems worldwide as a function of local cultural practices, in order to reveal tensions between various categories of values shaped by global tendencies, identifiable in national and institutional policies and practices;
• Exploring, defining, and comparing quality in higher education in different national and institutional contexts, in order to provide innovative and advanced methodology for evaluating and assessing quality in its various levels and dimensions;
• Bringing the collective voice of science into the policymaking process in higher education, by looking at how disciplinary and national differences affect policy making and by exploring new ways of maximising disciplinary associations’ influence on society and policy affairs;

“Elevating Higher Education public policies” (HESPRI) is a four-year project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) – Staff Exchanges, the call HORIZON-MSCA-2021-SE-01.