TY - BOOK ID - 4863646 TI - Mergers and Alliances in Higher Education : International Practice and Emerging Opportunities AU - Curaj, Adrian AU - Curaj, Adrian. AU - Georghiou, Luke. AU - Cassingena Harper, Jennifer. AU - Egron-Polak, Eva. PY - 2015 SN - 9783319131351 3319131346 9783319131344 3319131354 PB - Cham Springer Nature DB - UniCat KW - Education. KW - Higher Education. KW - Educational Policy and Politics. KW - International and Comparative Education. KW - Education, Higher. KW - Education KW - Enseignement supérieur KW - Social Sciences KW - Theory & Practice of Education KW - Universities and colleges KW - Education, Higher KW - Mergers. KW - Administration. KW - College amalgamations KW - College mergers KW - Consolidation of universities and colleges KW - Mergers of universities and colleges KW - Amalgamations KW - Consolidation KW - International education. KW - Comparative education. KW - Educational policy. KW - ducation and state. KW - Higher education. KW - Education and state. KW - College students KW - Higher education KW - Postsecondary education KW - Education policy KW - Educational policy KW - State and education KW - Social policy KW - Endowment of research KW - Education, Comparative KW - Global education KW - Intellectual cooperation KW - Internationalism KW - Children KW - Education, Primitive KW - Education of children KW - Human resource development KW - Instruction KW - Pedagogy KW - Schooling KW - Students KW - Youth KW - Civilization KW - Learning and scholarship KW - Mental discipline KW - Schools KW - Teaching KW - Training KW - Government policy KW - History KW - Consolidation and merger of corporations KW - International education . KW - Higher Education KW - Educational Policy and Politics KW - International and Comparative Education UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:4863646 AB - Higher education in Europe and beyond faces a series of major challenges. The economic crisis has accelerated expectations of an increased role in addressing economic and societal challenges while, at the same time, putting pressure on available finances. Broader trends such as shifting student demographics and expectations, globalisation and mobility and new ways of working with business have contributed to these increased pressures. In the light of these trends there have been moves, both from national or regional agencies and from individual institutions to respond by combining resources, either through collaborative arrangements or more fundamentally through mergers between two or more universities.  This volume seeks to draw upon recent and past experiences of mergers and associations short of a merger and to approach the subject both from a systemic level and from the perspective of individual institutions. Inevitably the two levels are interlinked but broadly speaking this distinction is used to separate Part 1, dealing with perspectives at the level of a nation and national system, although often illustrated by examples which extend the range of cases (for countries such as France, Sweden, Romania, Wales, China, South Africa), and Part 2, which takes us down to individual case-studies analysed in depth (in countries such as France, UK, Romania, Spain, Australia). These experiences of course also show responses to wider forces and initiatives but allow a more detailed insight into the specific rationales and the implementation issues involved in effecting a university merger. Within the sections the general flow is from large to medium to small European countries and then to non-European. The chapters of this volume tell stories and make contributions in their own right. An introductory chapter seeks to guide the reader by pointing out from the start some recurrent themes and tensions. In seeking to identify the phenomenon of university mergers, their causes and their consequences, a series of dichotomies are discussed: alliance vs merger; external vs internal motivation; education vs research; short-term vs long-term outcomes and assessment; and motivation and implementation. ER -