The Centre for Higher Education Studies (CHES) was established in 1991 by the transformation of the then Institute for Higher Education Development as a semi-budgetary organization of the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports (MEYS).
Since 1st January 2007, we have been operating in accordance with Act No. 341/2005 Coll. as a public research institution established by MEYS. Staff of today’s CHES have been involved in higher education research for over a quarter of a century.
Our research work is focused on Czech higher education in general and on its development. In recent years, specific topics have been concerned with the quality of higher education and the use of European standards for quality evaluation (one of the important outputs of the Bologna Process), the role of universities in regional development, the diversification of higher education and professionally oriented studies, doctoral studies, distance learning, e-learning, and other new educational methods. Currently, we also focus on higher education students and graduates (Graduate 2018, Eurograduate (2018-2020) and Eurostudent VII projects), problem of drop-out (SNOP project – Study Failure with Respect to Transition from Secondary School to University), we analyze the cooperation of higher education institutions with industry/business, inequalities in access to higher education, and the preparation of future teachers.
We are a member of DigiKoalice, Alliance for Open Education and Czech Association of Distance University Education, Czech Consortium of ReferNet Network.
Naturally, our activities also include international cooperation, which is primarily based on international projects. For example, in recent years, the following projects have been completed: the PERIF project (The Contribution of Higher Education Institutions to Strengthen Socio-economic Development of Peripheral Regions in Norway and the Czech Republic) focused on joint Czech-Norwegian research on the role of universities in peripheral regions, or the IQAT project (Enhancing Capacities in Implementation of Institutional Quality Assurance Systems and Typology Using Bologna Process Principles), with the aim to cooperate with HEIs in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in creating institutional quality assurance systems.
One of the pillars of our work is to monitor international and especially European developments in higher education. We focus on the Bologna Process, and on the activities of the European Commission, EUA, OECD and UNESCO in the field of higher education.
We work with many partner research institutes and centres in a number of European countries.
We publish the electronic journal AULA and we gradually create a new part of our website AULAWIKI.
An overview of our research results can be found in the CHES Annual Reports. Research studies, book publications, articles and other outputs are or gradually will be posted on this website.
.