Full Description
This ground-breaking book offers a compelling exploration of how masters programmes are shaped, managed, and transformed across Europe, revealing them not as neutral administrative units, but as key sites where the future of the university is actively negotiated.
Bringing together institutional accounts and critical analyses, the book examines how masters programmes are designed and governed across a range of national and institutional contexts. It follows how questions of institutional identity, decision-making, and internationalisation unfold in practice, often entangled with issues of language, student diversity, and mounting financial and policy pressures. Drawing on case studies from across Europe, it traces how broader dynamics such as the Bologna Process, marketisation, global mobility, and the growing presence of AI and large language models gradually reshape educational practices, often in ways that are neither planned nor evenly distributed. It bridges the gap between theory and practice, equipping university managers with robust frameworks, strategies, and tools to manage uncertainty and realize the potential of their educational programmes.
By making visible the tensions and trade-offs that are often hidden, including those emerging from the integration of AI into academic life, the book offers both a critical lens and a practical resource for academics, managers, and policymakers seeking to navigate and rethink the future of masters education.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abstract
List of contributors
Foreword: Contemporary challenges in the design of education provision.
Introduction: The strategic management of masters programmes - towards the establishment of a research field.
Part 1: Rethinking the Strategic Management of Masters Programmes in European Universities
1. Strategic purposes and stakeholders.
2. Strategic political economies.
3. Strategic organizational models.
4. Strategic change approaches.
Part 2: On Institutional Diversity and Convergence at the Master Level
5. Defining institutional diversity beyond the social inclusion debate.
6. Voices from the universities.
7. Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.
8. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland.
9. Polytechnical University of Madrid, Spain.
10. Technical Superior Institute, Portugal.
11. Technical University of Denmark.
12. Technical University of Munich, Germany.
13. Exploratory and critical perspectives across Europe.
14. Objectifying the Diversity of Master's Students: A Pedagogical Tool.
15. Towards Third Cultures in European Higher Education: Examining questions of language and internationalisation in European Master's programmes.
16. Still Lost in Translation: 35 years of master's programmes in Estonian higher education.
17. A critical reflection on the evolution of the masters degree in Spatial Planning and Urban Design at the University of Porto.
18. The Master of Civic Design at the University of Liverpool.
19. Synthesis and concluding thoughts.
References
INDEX
