This article provides an overview of the profiling of higher education programmes in Europe as part of the overall process of higher education reform in Europe over the past decade (2000-2012) and of the role of Tuning in this process. The article starts with a recall of the architecture and objectives of the change process, based on the interplay between the intergovernmental Bologna process (with a main focus on structural change), the European Union’s parallel Agenda for the Modernisation of Higher Education (with a focus on policy change for the Union’s main objectives: growth and jobs, mobility, recognition and attractiveness) and Tuning. The second part of the article provides some data about and examples of the method and importance of Tuning in stimulating and shaping the renovation of higher education programmes, with a focus on Tuning’s initial geographical area (Europe) and a glimpse to other continents, in line with Europe’s need to build up the visibility and attractiveness of its universities in the rest of the world. The final section is a retrospective and analytical reflection about the impact of Tuning on some key dimensions of the agenda for the modernisation of higher education in Europe; while acknowledging that the Tuning method and principles have not always been fully understood by higher education as well as governmental institutions, Tuning has made an outstanding contribution to such key aspects as the relevance, comparability and quality of programmes, the development of quality assurance and accreditation policies and agencies and the recognition of qualifications — both within Europe and with partner countries in other parts of the world.

Abstract:We explore on the basis of a simple survey tool the perceived impact of the Erasmus mobility experience on the improvement of the thirty generic competences of the Tuning Europe list. We rely on a self-assessment procedure, i.e. on data collected by the Erasmus Office of the University of Padova, Italy, through end-of-stay questionnaires, as returned by both outgoing and incoming Erasmus students. Processed data yield the percentage number of ticks, by which a given competence was chosen by the answering samples. We introduce a quantity "importance of improvement", which measures the perceived degree of development of a given generic competence during the mobility experience and allows a consistent comparison among different samples. On this basis, we can order the thirty competences according to decreasing perceived importance of improvement in the two above samples. From a general point of view, Erasmus students perceive the most important improvement in instrumental competences. We can then carry out meaningful comparisons between the profiles of competences' improvement of outgoing and incoming students, both in qualitative and in quantitative terms. Such a comparison reveals interesting features linked to the academic and human environments of mobile students. A further step in the analysis describes how country effects give more insight into the previous results. In such a context, we analyze the country impact on each given competence for both outgoing (visiting the country) and incoming (from the country) students, on the country subgroup * I gratefully acknowledge the availability of the International Relations Office of the University of Padova and of its Head Mrs. Roberta Rasa to access its data banks on Erasmus students. More particularly, I express my gratefulness to Mrs. Sabrina Marchiori, who preciously and patiently fed and updated the administrative data, and Mr. Mattia Gusella, who extracted the relevant data from the questionnaires' returns. ** Luigi F. Donà dalle Rose (dona@pd.infn.it) is a retired Professor in Theoretical Solid State Physics (University of Padova, Italy) and a European expert in higher education and student mobility issues. competences' profile and on the exchange of competences, which occurs between paired country subgroups. Improvement of generic competences during Erasmus mobility Donà dalle Rose 58Keywords: Generic competences; competence development; Erasmus exchange mobility; student self-assessment; country effects. I. IntroductionCompetence based learning is at the heart of the paradigm shift which is occurring at all levels of education since some decades. At higher education level the focus on the developments of both generic and subject specific competences became prominent at the beginning of this century and was the concept around which several pilot projects developed, among them Tuning Europe (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008), 1 which then became a worldwide process. Several aspects of the academic life took new inspiration and th...

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<p>In this Issue we present firstly the answers given so far by Latin America to the challenge of Quality Assurance, with an eye to the perspective involved in a possible forthcoming transition to a second generation of QA programs. We then present a “sub-regional” spinoff effect of the AHELO project, involving higher education institutions of Japan and Indonesia, willing to test, with an appropriate tool, the achieved learning outcomes of their students of mechanical engineering (master level). Finally, we present three articles from three African countries – Morocco, Ethiopia, and Tanzania – which deal with different facets of the complex challenge of the relationship between higher education and job market, here inflected in terms of job access, graduates’ wages, employability and actual employment after a competence-based learning path. The last article in this Issue, focused on a specific aspect of the above landscape of answers to major challenges, investigates the relationship between algebraic competences with emotional intelligence.</p><p><strong>First published online</strong>: 30 November 2017</p>

<p><span>Nowadays, there is a growing awareness that higher education is called to help young people to develop their personal and professional future. The university mission is not only to increase opportunities for employability and for better matching of labour market requests and graduates’ skills, but also to prepare people to positively live in local and global communities as well as to actively contribute to personal and community well-being. Therefore, a more holistic approach to education is required, which overcomes the traditional idea of promoting logical, cognitive and linguistic intelligence and which promotes multiple intelligences, including emotional, interpersonal, creative skills. Scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education and educational research have shown that there is a variety of strategies and methods that can foster not only the development of knowledge, but also soft skills. This Issue offers some perspectives and innovative experiences in different subject areas within this framework and moves towards more general visions of educational issues.</span></p><p><strong>Published online</strong><span>: 31 May 2018</span></p>