In autumn 2009, the ACA Secretariat and its partners will embark on two projects, one aimed at boosting student mobility and the other at measuring higher education institutions’ degree of internationalisation.

As the European umbrella organisation of some of the most important national scholarship providers, ACA will help produce a European database of scholarships offered in the countries of the EU27/EFTA, with the aim of increasing mobility both within Europe and beyond. The project, carrying the obvious name ScholarlshipsPortal.eu is delivered together with the Eindhoven-based group MastersPortal.eu – winner of the New Venture award for the most innovative social start-up in 2009, on the merits of its large database of master degree programmes in Europe. The online database should be up and running by mid-2010.

On the other hand, ACA will be involved in a multi-partner project that strives to help higher education institutions profile and self-assess their degree of internationalisation. The project “Indicators Mapping and Profiling Internationalisation” (IMPI) is led by CHE Consult (Centre for Higher Education Development) GmbH and involves prominent ACA members, namely CampusFrance, Nuffic, SIU, the Perspektywy Foundation and DAAD (the latter as an associate partner). Old passions die hard. In 1999, ACA embarked, together with other higher education experts, on an exercise to create the Internationalisation Quality Review (IQR) – a tool to help higher education institutions assess their progress (or lack of it) in internationalisation. Since 1999 the European and international higher education landscapes have changed tremendously. Yet, in the context of the Bologna and Lisbon objectives, all calling for increased competitiveness and globalisation in higher education, no other Europe-wide initiative to measure internationalisation has been taken. With IMPI, there will finally be a tool to address this need.

Both projects are funded by the European Commission, through the Lifelong Learning Programme.