IMPI Project (Internationalisation Indicators)
The ACUP has been an associate partner of the Indicators for Mapping and Profiling Internationalisation (IMPI) project since October 2009. This project is coordinated by the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHE) and was created with the purpose of developing a tool to measure the internationalisation profiles of higher education institutions, through objective and comparable indicators. The project also aims at introducing proposals to improve the international ranking of universities. The list of indicators is set both in terms of relevance and acceptance by the community.
Funded by the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning programme, the IMPI project, which covers a three-year time period, is designed to provide universities with a tool to measure their internationalisation level at a time when competition in higher education cannot be disassociated from its external presence and in which transparency and accountability in this area are still far from occupying the place they deserve. The active participation of the ACUP in this project responds directly to the framework strategy set in the Internationalisation Plan of the Catalan public universities. This strategy encourages active participation in the reflection on internationalisation as well as intervention in the definition and analysis of both internationalisation indicators and international rankings.
The project objectives are completed by the launch of a series of dissemination tools (workshops, symposia, web pages). Multiple discussion plans of results between the parties may be generated from these tools, which must then be tested prior to their implementation. The initiative aims, in turn, to boost to the universities internationalisation process and to increase their prestige through international projection in order to improve competitiveness. The main project partners, together with the CHE, are: the ACA (Academic Cooperation Association), Brussels; the NUFFIC (Netherlands Organisation for International Cooperation in Higher Education), the Netherlands; the SIU (Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education), Norway; CampusFrance, France; and Perspektywy (Fundacja Edukacyjna), Poland. Alongside the ACUP, there are around twenty European institutions that contribute to the initiative as associate partners.
