Over the years ESMU has developed a portfolio of activities to further promote strategic management practices in higher education through networks, projects, benchmarking exercises, seminars and training programme.

European networks – Higher education management

In 1997, ESMU launched HUMANE, a major network for heads of administration of European universities. HUMANE has a current membership of 200 heads of administration. Since its creation, ESMU hosted the HUMANE Secretariat and has been organising all HUMANE seminars, Rount tables and other meetings.

The Deans’ European and Academics’ Network (DEAN) was launched in 1999 is a platform for deans and academic leaders/managers to exchange their experience and know-how, share expertise on specific managerial issues and identify new solutions to existing managerial problems.

MODERN is a European platform which promotes the modernisation of higher education management. Under the leadership of ESMU, MODERN is a consortium of 10 core and 26 associate partners who have joined forces to provide a structured answer to the fragmentation in the supply of management support to HEIs, their leaders and managers.

Training activities

The ESMU-HUMANE Winter School for Senior Administrators has been running annually since 2003 bringing together 30-35 participants in each session for a one-week training programme. Topics include “The challenges of the European Higher Education area, strategic and change management, financial management, IT and HRM”. Through the week participants work on a major project to be submitted to a jury.

Distance courses on university-enterprise cooperation have been organised with UNESCO-IIEP for Higher Education Institutions in the East Mediterranean region, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and English-speaking Africa. These courses focused on the strategic management of university-enterprise relations, interfacing, financial and personnel management.

Identifying good practices of university management: Projects, studies, benchmarking exercises

Since its creation in 1986, ESMU has been identifying and encouraging good practices in university management through its various activities. This is also the “raison d’être” of HUMANE and DEAN.

Early 1999, ESMU launched a European Benchmarking programme on university management. Benchmarking is a self-improvement tool for organisations. It allows them to compare themselves with others, identify comparative strengths and weaknesses, and learn how to improve. Benchmarking finds and adopt good practices that go beyond the mere comparison of data.

In 2006, ESMU was partner in a major EU-funded project in a consortium lead by CHEPS to produce a report on higher education curriculum and governance reforms in 32 European countries.

In 1996 and 1997, ESMU carried out a study on university-enterprise co-operation for the European Commission (European Training Foundation; TEMPUS) which was followed by the production of a handbook on university-enterprise Cooperation and training sessions in a number of CEEC countries.

ESMU was partner in a project on university-enterprise cooperation with the DAAD (2007) and a number of other European partners to produce a report on this theme, based on a survey carried out in European universities. This resulted in a major conference to take stock and look forward to news steps to implement good practices at a conference in Bonn in June 2007.

Many TEMPUS projects on university management issues since the early nineties have contributed to identify good practices in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and more recently Russia.

• Three-year TEMPUS TACIS project (2007 – 2010) “University Knowledge Transfer for sustainable growth", a partnership between ESMU, London Metropolitan University (United Kingdom) and University of Nizhni Novgorod (Russian Federation)
• Three-year TEMPUS TACIS project (2005 – 2007) “Implementing the Bologna Process at the University of Nizhni Novgorod”, a partnership between ESMU, London Metropolitan University (United Kingdom), University of Nizhni Novgorod (Russian Federation) and University College Dublin (Ireland)
• Two-year TEMPUS TACIS project (2002 – 2004) “Becoming an entrepreneurial university”, a partnership between ESMU, London Metropolitan University (United Kingdom) and (Russian Federation)
• ESMU-efmd study programme in Europe For 30 Rectors of HEIs in Kazakhstan (November 2000)
• Joint CRE – ESMU TEMPUS project on strategic management for Bosnian universities, 1998-1999
• Ad-hoc TEMPUS Seminars, 1996 (Slovenia, Hungary, Romania)
• TEMPUS Joint European Projects on strategic management issues in Hungarian universities (1994)
• TEMPUS project - strategic management, 1990-1992 (Hungary, Poland, Czech and Slovak Republics)