A new project to create an “internationally comparable” test of what students learn across European higher education is to launch with a €500,000 (Rs.5.12 crore) grant from the European Union. This autumn will see the start of a feasibility study on the ‘Measuring and Comparing Achievements of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education in Europe Project,’ known as Calohee.

The project, which has a total budget of €667,600 (Rs.6.83 crore), most of which comes from the EU under the Erasmus+ programme, is an initiative of the Tuning Academy, an international higher education research centre located at the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Spain, and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

But the project, which claims the involvement of “prestigious universities” and university associations, has already drawn criticism from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose own global Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) project has been unable to get off the ground after going through a feasibility study, amid opposition from some universities. Andreas Schleicher, OECD director for education and skills, says that the “European approach is basically giving up on the idea of measuring outcomes in a serious and comparative way”.  According to him the Calohee system will involve “each institution setting its own framework”, an approach that was “not something the OECD would get into”.

Meanwhile an EU official says that the Calohee project is “developing a methodology for an internationally comparable assessment of what students learn, including their skills. The project will also provide the data needed to enable individual universities to compare and improve their performance. By doing so, the project addresses one of the EU’s main goals in higher education, viz, to improve the quality of teaching and learning, and by that, the relevance and quality of graduates’ skills.”