Conference “Regional Cooperation in Higher Education – Challenges and Opportunities”

October 6 and 7, 2011, Concert Hall Essen

In recent years, the academic landscapes of both Europe and North America have seen a trend towards inter-institutional cooperation: increasingly, institutions of higher education decide to form local or regional partnerships, and to combine their facilities in order to achieve better standards in research, teaching, infrastructure, and administration. This trend corresponds with a new development on the stage of international academic competition, where the major players – besides the top tier of world-renowned universities – are no longer individual institutions but regional clusters. As these developments call for a close examination, Mercator Research Center Ruhr (MERCUR) and Stiftung Mercator are jointly organizing the international conference “Regional Cooperation in Higher Education – Challenges and Opportunities”, which will take place in Essen, Germany, on October 6 and 7, 2011.

The aim of the conference will be a comprehensive survey and comparison of the different existing cooperation models. The conference program includes a total of 17 case studies drawn from Germany, Europe, and the United States, exemplifying varying degrees of cooperation – from alliances and coalitions to institutional mergers. These different types of cooperation will be scrutinized with an eye to both development strategies and the respective model-specific challenges and opportunities that can either be expected or have already become observable.

The conference is held in German and English, with simultaneous translation provided in both languages.

Organizers:

Mercator Research Center Ruhr (MERCUR) & Stiftung Mercator