The Academic Cooperation Association (ACA) is organising the annual ACA conference 2006 in cooperation with its Norwegian member, the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education (SIU).
The conference addresses the attractiveness of European higher education on a global scale from the perspective of Europe's higher education institutions. Its core questions are whether or not Europe is the most favoured destination of students, scholars and researchers which the Lisbon Strategy wants it to become, and what must be done to further consolidate and improve its position as an academic magnet.
However, the attractiveness agenda is deeply linked with neighbouring themes, which the conference will also address. The most important ones of these are:
- what is the role of cooperation in the global attractiveness contest, and particularly of solidarity-based educational development aid?
- What is the status of intra-European cooperation, now that we turn to the wider world: is this agenda over, or is there ongoing business?
- Are we realistic when we view the non-European world simply as a reservoir of student and scholar migration into Europe, or will some emerging economies not try to do exactly that with Europe?