Erasmus Policy Statement
During the last 10 years the institution has built a strong international network. Our focus has mainly
been on establishing partnerships in Europe, but partnerships in other parts of the world, such as
Africa, USA and Australia have also been established. Choosing new partnerships are predominantly
based on a) existing teacher and staff networks b) the R&D unit and c) students’ preferences. The
most preferred agreements are those whom combine all of these, interesting study programs for our
students and fields of common research for our staff. Our focus on partners in Europe is due to
Erasmus funding and the strong relations between Norway and EU, both financially and culturally.
We also look to our local industry and their relations to Europe. Several local companies have
established partners in Europe.
Student mobility, related to the first cycle, has been strongly emphasized the last couple of years. We
do not have agreements concerning student mobility in relation to 2nd cycle for the time being, nor
do we take part in any joint degrees. We now wish to pay more attention to teacher and staffmobility, increasing the number, but also to utilize these exchanges to greater extent through
developing closer and longer standing relationships throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
Teachers and staff from our partner institutions are welcome, and we try to facilitate guest lectures
for them, either to our students or other staff if that is more suitable.
We welcome the new program, Erasmus+, and we wish to enter into new projects with new partners
and expand our relations with existing partners in the future. HSH have been involved in Intensive
Programs, and wish now to explore the possibilities within Strategic Partnerships. For our research
strategy we focus on certain main fields related to our competence and the regional interest,
connected to the petro maritime industry, health care in a long term perspective and ICT in learning.
We are constantly seeking new partners in the fields and will continue with this in the future. HSH
also aspire to further involve our students, both at the bachelor and masters level, in our R&D.
We aim to improve the quality and relevance of our education and are strongly focusing on quality
control. NOKUT (Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education) is the controlling authority
for educational activity at all Norwegian universities, special field universities, university colleges and
institutions with single accredited higher education programs. HSH arranges a two day conference in
relation to learning outcomes where both students and staff participate. The main focus being topics
related to the quality of our study programs.
We aim to strengthen quality through mobility and cross-border co-operation. We are building a
strong international network which results in sending and receiving students from several different
countries. We have a yearly evaluation of our partners, focusing on what is best for our students. For
incoming students we develop courses taught in English which we believe to be of relevance to them.
By encouraging staff mobility we try to build strong networks for developing projects within different
fields of research.
We aim to link higher education, research and business for excellence and regional development. We
do have several partnership agreements with the local industry and with whom we discuss the local
needs and interest for our students in exchange. Our international students also visit local companies
while on exchange here in Haugesund.
For promoting mobility we arrange yearly an international fair where the international students have
stands to promote their university and country. Our students can find information concerning
exchange on our website and we have developed a database with reports from both incoming and
outgoing students. Through department meetings and information on our website we inform staff of
their possibilities for exchange.
We aim to support internationalization of European Higher Education. We will continue to focus on
internationalization, as we consider it a basic activity and part of education. The quality of our
teaching and research has to be based on international relations, and activities related to student
and staff exchange will be more and more relevant in the future. We will continue developing an
international network for our staff, and open up our programs for international students.
International students add such an important value to our student environment.