Current projects

Steering Higher Education for Community Engagement

The project Steering Higher Education for Community Engagement (SHEFCE) has been launched in October 2020 to help European universities and policymakers improve community engagement in higher education. Universities’ community engagement is understood as the university’s partnerships with external stakeholders to address societal challenges.

The project is led by the Institute for the Development of Education (Croatia) and gathers 23 partners/associate partners from six EU Member States. SHEFCE is a follow-up to the project TEFCE – Towards a European Framework for Community Engagement in Higher Education that has developed a toolbox to support universities and policymakers in supporting community engagement. The SHEFCE project will have four main outputs: 1) university action-plans for community engagement at five partner universities (in Belgium, Ireland, Croatia, Spain and Austria); 2) policy recommendations for system-level support for community engagement in higher education in five countries and at the EU level; 3) a European online platform for community engagement in higher education with resources and tools to support universities and communities; and 4) piloting a European university-community engagement ‘heatmap’ to help universities learn from good practices at universities in their country as well as in other countries.

CHEGG’s role in the project is to act as experts in the field of higher education policy and community engagement. The SHEFCE project is co-funded by the European Commission’s Erasmus+ programme.

Project duration: October 2020 - August 2023

Restructuring Norwegian Higher Education

This project is carried out by NIFU, Oslo and CHEGG is one of the international partners. As a result of the structural reform that was launched in 2015, the landscape of higher education in Norway has undergone major changes. Many universities and colleges have merged, which means that the sector is in the middle of a comprehensive reorganisation process. One consequence is that Norwegian higher education now consists of several large multi-campus universities and colleges. The reorganisation should be seen in the context of broader objectives of achieving high quality in education and research, regional development, a world-leading professional environment and efficient use of resources. The aim of the research project – a research-based evaluation of the structural reform – is to investigate whether the goals of the reform are being achieved, and why or why not. 

This is NIFU's project website.

Project duration: September 2019 - September 2022