Hunting for the right indicator
In order to meet the demands of an advanced knowledge-basedsociety, applied research is becoming a core element of theprofessional education mission of Universities of Applied Science(UASNET). The EDUPROF-projecthas tried to answer the most pressing problems.
Questions that arise are: how to ensure a good system of qualityassurance for applied research; how to translate research findingsinto educational programmes; how to adjust the qualities of staffmembers in relation to applied research; how to form good regionalnetworks; and how to finance the research activities.
Quality markers
Some of the indicators that passed the rigid tests of relevance,feasibility and robustness are and that could figure as futurequality markers, are:
• Direct basic government funding for research
• Total FTE spent on research
• % students involved in research
• Total number of publications/presentations/appearancesin popular media
• Total number of start-up firms
The full list of indicators – and the list of indicators thatdidn’t make it to the testing phase – can be found in theEDUPROF-report.
Fourteen universities
It was the goal of the ‘EDUPROF’-project to mirror thevarious developments within countries and regions to the Europeanlevel. In this way both peer learning and European harmonisationbetween Universities of Applied Science was stimulated. EDUPROF wasfunded with the support of the European Commission.
Fourteen Universities of Applied Sciences were involved,originating from ten different European countries: Finland,Lithuania, Portugal, Estonia, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland,Ireland, The Netherlands and Flanders (invited to join in by theproject partners). Expert on higher education policy and managementand project leader of the U-Map and U-Multirank projects Frans vanVught guided the process.
Read the full report
