MODERN CONFERENCE "GOVERNANCE"
9 June 2009 in Brussels, Belgium

The first MODERN Governance conference will take place in Brussels on Tuesday 9 June 2009.

As a highly focused and interactive event, the first MODERN conference will be based on an executive report on the state of the art of governance reforms in European higher education institutions produced by CHEPS, the Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies at the University of Twente, MODERN project partner. The report will be made available to all registered participants prior to the conference. It will build on existing literature, current and previous work on governance issues in higher education, including a major report produced for the European Commission in 2006 based on a survey in 32 European countries.

The conference will start with a networking dinner on 8 June. On 9 June the conference will be split into morning plenary sessions with key senior level speakers, i.e. policy makers and decision-makers from the European Commission, academia and the private sector, and afternoon highly specialised workshops on key themes linked to governance issues.

The conference will be an opportunity for the presentation of the very first results of the MODERN mapping the field exercise on the supply and the demand for HEM programmes.

The report will build on existing literature, current and previous work on governance issues in higher education, including major recent reports produced for the European Commission. It will look at system level governance and its impact on institutional governance in higher education institutions, i.e. increasing institutional autonomy, the shift from “government to governance”, from State regulation to various forms of “multi-level and multi-actor governance.