Today, universities are tasked with many new roles. Not only they have to deal with evolving student expectations, changing labour market requirements and sustainability pressures, but also face most recent challenges in public health such as the coronavirus pandemic crisis. In this context, building capacity to address rapid change is getting crucial to the university’s ability to deliver on its expanding missions.Many European higher education systems, including those of the Strategic Partnership, face similar issues. Structural modernisation and governance reforms aimed at propelling value for society pose both challenges and opportunities for the sector, as for instance in Spain. It is therefore essential to develop support conditions for higher education institutions and their leaders to enable them to respond to key changes and crises. In Europe, too few university leaders and senior managers have profound experience needed to lead and manage transformation. This community thus requires affordable support and training to respond to change (both planned and unforeseen, such as the current COVID-19 crisis). Leadership development opportunities must encompass the national context and priorities as well as global and European challenges and change areas. They must also involve transversal and area-based knowledge and competences. This complex task can only be pursued efficiently and effectively as a joint effort at European level. In this context, Ramon Llull University and CRUE, representing Spanish universities, as well as EUA, ESCP Business School, CRASP, VLIR and the University of Iceland partnered to enhance the capacity of higher education institutions, their leaders and senior managers – in their countries and more broadly in Europe – to steer change and tackle the complex topics on the institutional transformation agenda. This goal will be achieved by designing a novel approach for effective and efficient leadership development and change/crisis management; offering support to the sector through methodological and practical guidance; promoting best practices in dealing with change in the emerging areas of university’s responsibility (e.g. social inclusion, sustainability, collaboration with business); and encouraging the exchange and adoption of innovative management in higher education. The partners seek to involve top university leadership (rectors and vice-rectors) including senior managers (directors of central services) and academic leaders at faculty level (deans) based on an inclusive vision of higher education leadership. By creating a unique setting for peer learning in institutional transformation, they aim to support both emerging and established leaders. Conceptually, NEWLEAD will go beyond the state of the art with its innovative holistic approach to institutional leadership and change/crisis management, bridging related institutional processes and capabilities. It will address a broad range of global and country-specific change areas and establish the core set of skills that university leaders need to drive change institutionally to create impact in the most pressing issues such as equity, diversity and inclusion, sustainability and public health. NEWLEAD will develop a methodological report outlining the core principles, priorities and processes of change and crisis management in higher education. Further results will include a set of innovative workbooks offering guidance on specific challenges facing universities in the partners’ countries and usable by peers from other countries. The workbooks will be shared at a series of multiplier events, providing opportunity to test the outlined methodologies with the selected university leaders. The key result of the project on its completion will be a report on leadership and institutional transformation guiding institutions in their efforts to identify and build the capacity of leaders to address change and engage in transformation from different institutional angles. The immediate outcome will be greater capacity of ca. 200 university leaders and senior managers engaged in NEWLEAD to deal with institutional change. This will involve greater awareness of the key change areas in higher education, deeper knowledge of the core leadership and change management principles and practices, and the enhanced skills in the field. The partners will also strengthen their own capacity to guide leaders from other institutions. More broadly, the improved change management practices at institutions exposed to NEWLEAD will generate more efficient and effective processes as well as better workplace environment. University students are final beneficiaries of the project, gaining from the improved educational processes and study environment.

With the internationalization of education and the growing need for specialists who meet the requirements of the new digital and innovative economy, the role of universities is becoming a key. In this regard, new forms of interaction between higher education organizations at the international level of university networks emerging and developing. “Although Azerbaijan signed Bologna agreement already in 2005, there is weak awareness of benefits of EHEA related issues among wider audience in the country. The knowledge on the recent developments of higher education system in Azerbaijan remains vague. The communication and networking concerning EHEA issues is rather fragmented among different departments in the MoE and various stakeholders. There is a need of national universities networks in Azerbaijan to promote and facilitate cooperation, support universities in their primary work, that is – high quality education, as well as to actively lobby for better legislation and wise spending its finance aimed at the advancement of higher education and research. The consortium believes that Rectors conference can be a great getaway for all of the universities presenting a single voice in key initiatives and challenges. The ultimate goal of this project is to endorse strong networking and cooperation among national universities and decision makers through the establishment of Rectors Conference. The approach chosen for implementation, however, includes a collaborative framework with respective stakeholders, mainly focusing on educational needs.The overall aim of the project is fostering national networking and cooperation among universities and all other stakeholders by establishing the rectors conference in accordance with national development strategies.

Recent European reports on QA show that HEIs have made progress in establishing internal quality assurance (IQA) systems based on ENQA’s European Standards and Guidelines (ESG) for QA in the EHEA, but they need practical advice on the interpretation of the ESG 2015 and support in further development of IQA. The progress in the implementation of IQA systems varies greatly among HEIs in the four countries participating in the project and many of them are yet to have fully-fledged systems in place. The QA Agencies in the four countries are committed to enhancing their methodologies for the assessment of IQA systems as part of their external evaluations based on the exchange of good practice and strengthening their cooperation with a view to exchanging experts. The ENQA-coordinated external review of the Polish Accreditation Agency (PKA) in 2014 recommended that the Agency should produce a Guide to IQA/ Code of Good Practice in IQA for HEIs. Against this background, the project ‘Enhancing Internal Quality Assurance Systems’ (EIQAS) had two objectives: 1) to increase the capacity of higher education institutions in the participating countries to develop internal quality assurance by enhancing their awareness and understanding of Part 1 of the ENQA European Standards and Guidelines and identifying, developing and disseminating good innovative practice in internal quality assurance; and 2) to increase the capacity of the participating QA agencies in external quality assurance by comparing their methodologies for the assessment of internal quality assurance and exchanging and developing good practice in IQA assessment. EIQAS brought together four QA Agencies, PKA (Poland), NEAA (Bulgaria), A3ES (Portugal) and SQAA (Slovenia), the Polish and Portuguese Rectors’ Conferences (KRASP and CRUP) and 3 HEIs from Slovenia and Portugal (University from Minho, Nova Gorica and Ljubljana). The main activities of the project included: - a comparative analysis of the QA Agencies’ methodologies for the assessment of IQA systems to identify good and transferrable practice; - a survey on IQA and the ESG to identify the main problems faced by HEIs in IQA and in the interpretation of Part 1 of the ESG; - three Training Events (C1, C2, C3): a seminar on IQA and the ESG for the QA Agencies and HEIs; training for the QA Agencies’ experts involved in external evaluations; and special training for students-experts involved in the QA Agencies’ external evaluations; - the production of Training Event 1 publications on IQA and Part 1 of the ESG; - dissemination activities at institutional, national and European levels, including multiplier events designed not only to promote the project’s outputs but also to share the expertise gained by project participants. The project produced the following main outputs: - a reference framework for comparative analysis of the QA Agencies’ methodologies for assessing IQA systems, and a comparative report on their methodologies identifying good transferrable practice; - country reports and a cross-country report on HEIs’ main problems in the implementation of IQA systems and the interpretation of Part 1 of the ESG; - a Guide to IQA for HEIs, including general guidelines, practical advice on each Part 1 ESG and good practice examples from each of the four countries under each ESG; - a Students Guide to ESG focusing on issues under each Part 1 ESG which are specifically relevant to students; and- a report proposing a framework for further training of QA Agency experts and arrangements for the exchange of experts among the Agencies. The project had/ have short- or medium-term impact on the participating QA Agencies in terms of their IQA assessment methodologies improved through the integration of good practice tested in the other countries, greater professionalism of the Agencies’ experts and their enhanced awareness of European approaches to the assessment of IQA, and greater internationalisation of the Agencies through future exchange of experts. While establishing fully-fledged IQA systems at HEIs is a long and challenging process, the project’s main training events, the two Guides were produced and multiplier events were expected to contribute in the medium term to improving the existing systems in terms of the increased awareness of IQA among HEI staff and students, the overall design of systems and the integration of all elements of Part 1 of the ESG in the four participating countries. As the outputs of EIQAS were distributed among European QA and HE organisations and QA Agencies, the project is likely to have impact at European level in terms of wider promotion and better understanding of Part 1 of the ESG and related good practice, mutual understanding of approaches to IQA and to the assessment of IQA as part of external quality assurance processes.