CHEPS

CHEPS is a research institute (WHW, Article 9.20) located in the Faculty of Governance and Management within the University of Twente, a public university established by the Dutch government in 1961. CHEPS is a specialized higher education policy centre that combines basic and applied research with education, training and consultancy activities.

Within the Netherlands, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OC&W) is our main research funder. We also cooperate with other ministries and organisations such as the Netherlands Advisory Council on Science and Technology Policy (AWT), the HBO-Council and the Association of Dutch Universities. Internationally, CHEPS works with a wide variety of contracting agencies including the European Commission, Ford Foundation, OECD, the Higher Education Founding Council for England (HEFCE), the German Research Council, and the World Bank. CHEPS has a high level of visibility in the national and international academic community as well as among policy-makers/practitioners in higher education. Annually, the Centre presents around 40 key notes/papers at conferences of scholarly and policy-related organisations. CHEPS’ international visibility is evidenced by its leadership and involvement in European research consortia and a European Network of Excellence. Staff members hold important positions in a wide range of higher education organisations including CHER, EAIR, OECD/IMHE, SRHE and UNESCO and are members of more than a dozen editorial boards of international journals and book series. The wide range of national and international organisations that commission work from CHEPS is an important indicator of the relevance of our research.

CHEPS is a dynamic organisation: our research programme is revised periodically on the basis of research findings and developments in the field; externally funded research projects are completed and new ones developed; the scope and focus of education, training and consultancy activities shifts over time. Yet within this changing portfolio of activities there are some core features that characterise work at CHEPS:

CHEPS has been the lead partner in a series of three EU funded projects aimed at developing a European classification of higher education institutions. In August 2005 we published a report ‘Institutional Profiles, towards a Typology of Higher Education Institutions in Europe’ outlining the results of the first phase of the project. This phase produced a set of principles for designing the classification as well as a first draft of a multi-dimensional classification including an appropriate set of dimensions (the areas in which institutions will be classified) and indicators to measure them.

In September 2008 we published a second report, ‘Mapping Diversity: Developing a European Classification of Higher Education Institutions’ reflecting the progress made in the second phase of the project. This included refinements to the dimensions and their indicators; and a successful set of tests of the draft classification in a significant number of European higher education institutions.

In October 2008 the third and final one year phase of the project started. In this phase we will evaluate and fine-tune the dimensions and their indicators and bring them into line with other relevant indicator initiatives; finalise a working on-line classification tool; and articulate this with the classification tool operated by the Carnegie Foundation.

In addition, CHEPS coordinated the Dutch and Flemish parts of the Socrates-funded pilot project to extend the CHE university ranking to study programmes in those two higher education systems (2006-2007), which was an important learning experience for the possibilities and complications of international and intercultural ranking. Since then, CHEPS has been involved in the expert panel of the Dutch student information site (‘ranking’), Studychoice123.nl, and in its cooperation with the CHE.