Higher education governance and its autonomy is strongly enhanced by the effective and convincing accountability, transparency and financial sustainability. Discussions on the university governance and autonomy throughout HEIs in Europe are coming as a response to diverse challenges at the different country’s context. As a result, the need for gaining and enhancing public trust in higher education became manifest to develop appropriate forms of transparency and accountability of both public and private institutions. An initiative to form a consortium came as response to address these challenges through the project Strengthening university autonomy and increasing accountability and transparency of Western Balkans Universities /STAND project .The concept entails investing in the strengthening the mechanisms that ensures the long-term sustainability of university autonomy, transparency and accountability. The project foresees cooperation between HEIs in the WB region, their respective ministries and program country partners and contributes to the increasing of professional capacities of HEI staff in partnering HEIs. As structural project it will support reflecting on standards at EU partners and enhancing them at WB institutions through intensified regular academic and management exchange of good practice and sustainable networking between EU-WB partners. A mix of bottom-up and top-down approach that will be used in the project, fosters the dialogue between universities and ministries, and thus enables the consortium to contribute more effectively to the project implementation and sustainability to strengthen the autonomy of Western Balkans higher education institutions. The project aims to reach up to 50,000 persons engaged in higher education and other related activities in Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro and abroad through its dissemination activities.

This project aims at creating dual (university-school) integrated diploma for developing a new generation of STEM teachers in Egypt, who are capable to provide adequate and innovative teaching in Science, Technology, Math and Engineering-based subjects, embracing STEM philosophy and are capable to bridge the gap between current school education methodologies and those needed for future pre-university school evolution. Adequate school education is the foundation for any human capacity development in Egypt, which has suffered continual degradation during last 3 decades in both quality and quantity of students pursuing STEM-based careers. This has directly contributed to ranking Egypt in the tail of the list of innovative-driven countries affecting both social and economic prosperity and effective integration in the global system. This shall be realized by an EG and EU accredited multi-track diploma lasting for 9 months, 6 of which introduced at participating universities covering pedagogical, psychological, technology-based education and engineering modules followed by 3 selective knowledge-specific tracks. The remaining 3 months are covered via apprenticeship integration in operating schools. The diploma program is equipped with a STEM resource center capable of feeding STEM schoolteachers with ever-developing ICT- and hardware resources converting abstract math/science education into engineering and technology-based innovative applications. The targets of this program are the employed and future math/science primary/secondary schoolteachers. The proposed diploma shall be developed in cooperation between universities, public authorities and NGOs. The plan is to start running this diploma during the third year of the project to account for fine adjustments. A gap analysis will be developed and followed by comprehensive course development. A wide community impact is expected as outlined by various stakeholders from the higher and pre-university education communities.

CHINLONE has been designed as a structural capacity-building project aimed at fostering the modernization and internationalization of MM’s HES, currently in the midst of an epochal reform that mirrors the country’s transition towards democracy. With this in mind, the project tailors its main efforts on the needs and exigencies of three key target groups, represented by local academic leaders, professors and educators, as well as administrative staffs, in order to train them with the most prominent features of the European expertise in terms of academic governance, degree courses designing, and IR management. In doing so, the notions and know-how consolidated through their interactions with European partners will be further capitalized and disseminated on the local dimension, by means of cascade trainings and related activities with additional universities and local HEIs. Hence, CHINLONE is expected to produce a lasting legacy in MM well before the end of its timeline, through the inception of innovative and updated curricula in the strategic fields of studies of humanities and cultural heritage, economics and geography of tourism, and agricultural sciences, so to equip local prospective students with the tools and skills currently demanded by the labour market and economic stakeholders. This approach, most notably, can provide a valuable contribution to MM’s evolution towards a ‘knowledge economy’, paving the way for the introduction of new national policies in the sphere of HE on project-specific topics; which, in turn, will lead to the progressive ascendance of local HEIs in regional education rankings, to a steady increase in the overall number of students enrolling in MM’s universities, and to a parallel boost in international mobility flows to and from the country.