During the last 30 years, Higher Education (HE) has changed a lot. In the Northern part of Europe, until the 1960s, the traditional universities dominated with the ideal of an elitist university with freedom of academic research, which implied searching for the truth, and with an approach to education as presenting research. After the 1960s, with the students' rebellion, the university culture changed. At the traditional universities, students started to formulate demands, and became critical of the decline of the dominant research paradigm. At the managerial level, students had more influence on the boards, and they also applied pressure to develop new educational models such as the project- and problem-based learning (PBL) models that were implemented in Bremen University in Germany, Maastricht University in the Netherlands, Linköping University in Sweden, and Aalborg and Roskilde University in Denmark. During the 1970s and 1980s, the predominant picture was still that of traditional universities, but the university system expanded because of increased enrolment numbers (Carter et al., 2003)
Often in history, unexpected partnerships occur: one of these partnerships was between the students' movements and industry. Many of the students' criticisms and alternatives, such as peer learning and problem-based and project-based learning, went hand in hand with demands from industry. For example, Aalborg University in Denmark was established in 1974 as a PBL university, due to lobbying from industry as well as being a result of the students' movement. This partnership was founded due to the fact that the largest faculty at Aalborg University was the Faculty of Engineering. It has been well known that there is a need for the ability to manage projects and co-operate, particularly in the technological field
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Kolmos, A. (2009). Problem-Based and Project-Based Learning. In: Skovsmose, O., Valero, P., Christensen, O.R. (eds) University Science and Mathematics Education in Transition. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09829-6_13
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