As tradition demands, ACA’s well-known European Policy Seminars (EPSs) were on the agenda in 2018– starting with the traditional What’s new in Brussels? focusing on recent developments in EU programmes and policies, the second EPS providedan informed discussion on impact assessment of internationalisation at different levels – European, national, institutional, and individual, while the third EPS looked into the links and overlaps between academic mobility and skilled migration through developments in European and national policies, practices and relevant research. In addition, ACA organised three more events in 2018: in February - an Advocacy event in Brussels for ACA members and Brussels-based stakeholders – the result of ACA’s working group Brussels-based events, in April - a joint seminar in beautiful Athens with its Greek member IKY – State Scholarships Foundation and in October - a networking event in Podgorica for ACA members and their Western Balkans counterparts, with support from the Montenegrin Erasmus+ Office – the result of ACA’s working group Western Balkans. 

The second phase of the Study in Europe project started in 2018 in the same composition (ACA, Archimedes Foundation, British Council, Campus France, DAAD and Nuffic) and ACA delivered a webinar in November for national promotion agencies on the use of social media in marketing. In December, ACA’s Estonian member organisation – the Archimedes Foundation – released the new Study in Europe video, which aims to show the advantages of pursuing higher education in Europe. As part of IMPALA, an Erasmus+ capacity-building project, ACA co-developed a workshop on internationalisation strategies for the four South African partner universities and said goodbye as the project ended in December with an impressive scoreboard of results in its portfolio. GREET, a Horizon 2020 Science4Refugees project coordinated by ACA in partnership with DAAD and EDUFI, started in April and the consortium hosted a PLA in Brussels for national-level organisations and higher education institutions in the nine participating nine countries. The same team looks forward to starting another joint project in less than a month – CARe (Career Advancement for Refugee Researchers in Europe). 

Two ACA projects in 2018 were commissioned by members and devoted to the identification of key target markets from where to recruit international students. They were “Study in Estonia”, funded by the Archimedes Foundation and “Study in Slovenia”, commissioned by CMEPIUS. Both projects have been completed, even though there might be a successor study in the case of Slovenia. 2018 also saw the first full year of the TPF-led Campus Mundi project which reviews the internationalisation strategies and practices of Hungarian universities and in which ACA is responsible for the management of the ‘international’ (non-Hungarian) peers. 

The big news of 2018 is that the ACA Newsletter – Education Europe has become a free service. The only thing to do is subscribe to the ACA mailinglist and Education Europe will be in your inbox at the end of the month!

With warm wishes for the upcoming holidays, ACA thanks its members, partners and friends for a year full of commitment, cooperation and inspiration!