Higher Education in the High North

This book focuses on how the Northern futures are transformed through regional cooperation in the Barents eduscape: a study of the social, cultural and political aspects of higher education and the exchanges of learning and people in the Euro-Arctic Barents region, especially between Norway and Russia. Cultural exchange through higher education involving actors such as students and institutions is an integral part both of the Bologna process and of the policies currently changing higher education. It is also a process of social and cultural change of which we have limited knowledge. Cultural exchange is learned, implemented and performed by the actors who are involved, from the highest political level to the grassroots and the students themselves. Available knowledge of these macro- and micro-processes of cultural exchange is largely fragmented and distinctly framed in national and/or disciplinary (i.e. pedagogical) contexts. In order to understand the transformative potentials of higher education and cultural exchange, this book focuses on the social, cultural and political aspects of the transformations of the futures in the North. This book shows that educational cooperation between Norway and Russia is possible, but also that the existing practices are extremely vulnerable to changes seen through micro theoretical perspectives. By developing new theories which bind major theories, international political decisions, methodological procedures and contextual descriptions together, this book is a first step in the direction of institutionalizing educational cooperation between the various and different academic societies, cultures and political systems.