Mid-term Evaluation Mission to the ESCs first group of grantees Results and Recommendations

 

 

Preliminary note

 

The ESCs should use this mission report to mirror their current position on the way of implementing the ESC/PMO contract. The findings and assessment of the evaluation team should be seriously taken into consideration. This kind of "soft" outside evaluation helps the ESCs to develop reliable self-control methods. The latter are important pillars to achieve sustainability and finally to convince the university's leadership to provide further support after March 2008.

As an overall result of our mission to all ESCs, we are satisfied with the general state of implementation and do notrecommend to suspend the financial support to any ESC, even if in some cases considerable difficulties in achieving sufficient results and evidence for a promising performance in the future had been detected. In the following you first find some general results and recommendations referring to the overall picture of grant proposal implementation followed by an evaluation of your Centre and some specific recommendations. We also include a list of detected problems and requirements regarding financial and accounting issues.

 

 

 

General Results and Recommendations

 

• Some ESCs are still integrated in schools (e.g. economics, political science, law) with the result that a) interdisciplinary approaches are difficult to implement, b) teaching programmes on European Studies are scattered over different schools, c) the establishment of MA courses or degree programmes on European Studies has not been given top priority.

 

Recommendation: Take measures to set up a recognized Master degree programme in European Studies and actively seek support from the university leadership.

 

 

• In many cases the cooperation between the ESC and the European partner uni­ver­sities is not based on sufficiently detailed agreements on who is responsible for what.

 

Recommendation: ESCs with such kind of problems should take measures to further specify content and framework of co-operation. If needed, the AA and the European AB members could act as agents between the ESC and the European part­ners.

 

• In many cases the internal organizational structure of ESCs  e.g. who is responsible for what, how to distribute information seems to be a weak point.

 

Recommendation: ESCs should improve the internal management structure. As one sup­porting step, PMO will organize a training seminar on "Modern Management of Academic Institutions" as part of the next ESCP Roundtable Seminar to help directors and deputy directors to improve further.

 

 

• Students staying for the first time in Europe need some time to adapt to the new environment.

 

Recommendation: ESCs should offer preparatory courses for faculty members/students who plan to stay for the first time in Europe. AA can be asked for support.

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• Some students who returned from a stay at the European partner university complained about a lack of guidance and supervision.

 

Recommendation: ESCs should ask their European partners for intensive supervision programmes for the Chinese students.

 

 

• Some European partner universities complained about an unexpected heavy work load because of a large number of incoming students/faculty members from China.

 

Recommendation:

a) Upon approval by PMO the European partner can recommend that scholars/students from the Chinese ESC stay at other European universities where respective expertise is available. This third institution has to provide a written declaration that the requested services can be provided as specified.

b) If an ESC has cooperation agreements with several European universities, the re­di­stribution of work load should be discussed so that the co-operation tasks can be more equally distributed.

 

 

• According to the proposals of most ESCs, only a relatively small number of ESCs’ students have the chance to study in Europe. Considering the ongoing globalization, it is widely accepted that studying abroad is an important asset for students. The growing number of foreign students – especially from China - in European Union Member States confirms this development. A considerable part of these students is supported by scho­larships from various European and non-European institutions/foundations. The ESCs should provide information to their students on other sources of funding for such stays.

 

Recommendation: At each ESC a deputy director should be responsible for providing detailed information on scholarship programmes for faculty members and students regularly as well as on specific demand (e.g. Erasmus Mundus, DAAD, OEAD etc.). PMO will provide relevant information in a separate letter later.

 

• Some ESCs lack expertise and knowledge to offer high quality courses on European related issues. This refers to the methodology as well as to the content.

 

Recommendation: ESCs shall take measures to enhance teacher´s skills.

 

 

• In research and teaching, interdisciplinary approaches prepare the ground for innovative results. In Chinese ESCs there seems to be only little experience (and maybe in few cases even no will) to cooperate in an interdisciplinary team. The ESC members work more or less isolated in their own discipline. The already published papers are based on discipline specific not on interdisciplinary research.

 

Recommendation: The ESCs should organize more interdisciplinary research and teaching activities.

 

 

• All research results which are published until now are written in Chinese. Firstly, this restricts the dissemination of the ESCP results to a domestic audience (and to some few foreign scholars). Secondly, excellent papers can not be published in international peer reviewed journals.

 

Recommendation: ESCs faculty members should publish articles/books in English and try to submit articles to international journals. The ESCs should establish incentive mechanisms to moti­vate students to write their thesis in English. European partners should be asked for support.

 

 

• We discovered that in ESCs that don’t offer an MA programme in European Studies within the Centre, the students from different disciplines obviously meet for the first time at the PMO-AB visits. There is a lack of interdisciplinary communication and cooperation at the student level. Furthermore, some students are interested in creating interuniversities communi­cation and cooperation networks.

 

Recommendation: The ESCs should improve the intrauniversity co-operation and encourage their students to enhance exchange and to build networks with students from other universities.