Name of the project: Navigating University Autonomy: Academic Policy Center for Better Higher Education (NUANCE)
Project duration: 01.09.2024 – 31.08.2025
Donor: INTERREG Danube program, European Commission
Lead Partner: Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade
Partners: Regional Centre for Advanced Studies in Humanities Sciences, CEU GmbH – Central European University Private University
The long-term goal of the project is to establish an Academic Policy Centre (APC) which will develop policy-relevant research within the regions of Central Eastern (CEE) and Southeastern Europe (SEE) focusing on the universities and university-relevant public policy. The project will create a synergy between the stakeholders invested in research and higher education in Belgrade (Serbia), Rijeka (Croatia), and Budapest (Hungary) and will focus on the creation of an architecture of clusters of experts from across the region. APC would serve as a hub for fostering stronger collaboration on joint project development and mobility schemes between the partners. The primary focus of the first phase will be on the analysis of the specificities of the university policies in the partner countries with the main aim of amending the existing disparities in the tertiary level of education within the Danube Region, finding common strategic ways to improve the existing policies in each of the countries that suffer from the wider tendency of “corporate governance” of the universities.
The final goal of the main project is to create a strong policy hub that will address all the problems the universities are facing with respect to the local and regional legislations, the division and not collaboration between public and private sectors, and finally, the brain drain of staff as well as students all three countries are facing.