Reichert Consulting for Higher Education offers 30 years of international expertise in university and research system and organisational development,
- facilitating strategy development and organisational change at universities across Europe and beyond,
- analysing and evaluating policy developments for university and research sector organisations, ministries.
To help European and national higher education organisations and universities address their own development aims, Reichert Consulting fills a frequently observed gap in higher education expertise: the need to address central questions of strategy and organisational transformation in view of the wider international developments of higher education policy and innovative practices at other universities.
With growing global and national competition for resources, qualified researchers and students, universities and their representative organisations vitally depend on insights into other higher education systems and institutions in order to reflect and improve institutional practices. Moreover, the capacity to cooperate across institutional, national and disciplinary borders has become a necessary condition for the vital role of universities in addressing global challenges of digital transformation and climate change and its societal, economic and technological conditions. European, national and institutional developments in Higher Education are increasingly determined by trans-national trends, debates, good practices or benchmarks.
Thanks to broad and in-depth experience in international Higher Education developments and institutional change processes all over Europe, Reichert Consulting for Higher Education combines an international comparative perspective with an in-depth institutional development focus.
About Sybille Reichert
Since her university studies in Brussels and Heidelberg and PhD from Yale University (1994), Sybille Reichert has been focussing on Higher Education policy and strategy development and university reforms in Europe, at first for the European Commission and other European organisations, later also for individual universities and national Higher Education organisations all over Europe.
In 2005, after a decade of policy studies and strategy projects for European organisations and universities, including three years as as head of strategic development at ETH Zurich, Reichert set up her own consultancy, which was awarded the ETH spin-off label: Reichert Consulting: Policy and Strategy Development for Higher Education. Her mandates combine institutional reform agendas and change management with global higher education developments. Reichert has worked for a wide range of institutions all over Europe and beyond, from individual universities to national ministries, rectors’ conferences or European organisations such as the European University Association (EUA) or the League of European Research Universities (LERU).
As chancellor of the University Erlangen-Nürnberg (2014 -2016), Reichert was responsible for the university’s finances, infrastructures, services, personnel and organisational development (CFO and COO). Highlights of her mandate include the consolidation of the university’s finances, successful lobbying and planning of major infrastructural investments and large-scale construction measures as well as the introduction of systematic staff development.
Since then, strategy and policy mandates have included strategy coaching and organisational development in the context of German and French Excellence competitions or the development of European University Alliances, as well as policy studies on the role of universities in regional innovation ecosystems and higher education reform and capactiy building in Indonesia, Tunisia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Reichert also participates frequently in formative evaluations, at programme, faculty, institutional and system levels at universities all over the world, ranging from diverse functions such as Chair of the Accreditation Committee for the Central European University’s establishment in Austria, to reviewing Quality Assurance Systems in Indonesian Universities or evaluating a capacity building international masters programme for Sub-Saharan African Higher Educational professionals.
Reichert’s work for universities and sector organisations, builds on intercultural competences and sensitivity including the ability to conduct strategic development and change management in German, English, and French. Reichert’s strategy and policy mandates and organisational coaching projects benefit from her capacity to translate between European, national, regional and institutional levels of policy and strategy development as well as between different disciplinary and cultural discourses.
Professional service:
- Chair of the International External Institutional Review Panel of Vilnius University (in the framework of the regular Lithuanian Institutional Accreditations carried out by the Centre for Quality Assessment in Higher Education of Lithuania, March – June 2022).
- Chair of the International Institutional Review Committee of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, with a focus on the institutional Strategic Research Areas as strategic steering instrument. (February – June 2022)
- Member of the Selection Committee for the national strategy competition “Innovative Hochschule” (January-March 2022)
- Member of the Expert Advisory Group of the DAAD-Nuffic-British Council Project SHARE (European Union Support for Higher Education in the ASEAN Region), 2021-23.
- Member of the Steering Committee of European Knowledge Ecosystems in the New ERA Project of the European Commission, 2021-22.
- Member on the External Quality Board of the Aurora European Universities Alliance, since 2021.
- Member of the Austrian Science Council (Österreichischer Wissenschaftsrat, ÖWR) since 2016.
- Chair of the AQ Austria Accreditation Committee for the Institutional Accreditation of the Central European University in Austria, 2019.
- Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Université de Lyon, 2017 – 2020.
- Member of the Catalan Research and Innovation Council, 2009 -2012.
- Senior advisor to the European University Association, 2003 – 2010.
- Member of the Konstanz Wissenschaftsforum, 2006 – 2011.
