Staff Profile

Hans Schuetze is a Fellow and former Director, Centre for Policy Studies in Higher Education and Training, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada where he a Emertitus Professor. He is also Honorary Professor of Education, University of Glasgow. He holds a PhD in international law and comparative government (University of Göttingen, Germany), LL.M. (University of California at Berkeley) and the German Bar Exam ('zweites juristisches Staatsexamen').

He studied social sciences, economics, and law at the universities of Göttingen and Bonn (Germany), Grenoble (France) and of California at Berkeley (USA). After a short career as a lawyer in private practice (specialized in public and international law) and Legal Counselor for two levels of government in Germany, he worked as a policy analyst and research co-ordinator at the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, and later as a Minister's Counselor on technology and human resources development policies in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Technology (Germany). Based on work that he undertook in the latter capacity, he was the founder and first General Manager of the North German Agency for Technology Transfer and Innovation (NATI), a model that was emulated in several of the new Länder.

He also served for five years as the elected mayor of a district of the City of Hannover. In this capacity he has been especially engaged in public self-help and housing projects for immigrants and minority populations as well as in establishing municipal Learning and Cultural Centres.

From 1991, he was Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Studies University of British Columbia and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies in Higher Education and Training (of which he was the Director between 1995 to 1996 and again 2002 to 2006). Retired in 2006, he remains a Fellow at the Policy Centre while, at the same time, joining the law cabinet of Hanske & Nielsen in Hannover, Germany, specializing in education and the law as well as on international human rights issues.

He has worked as a consultant on educational policy for the OECD, UNESCO, the EU, the Canadian government, the British Columbia provincial government as well as several other education policy bodies, as well as a visiting professor at the universities of Vienna and Graz (Austria), Hanover and Oldenburg (Germany), Rouen (France), and Hiroshima (Japan) as well as at the Centre for Research and Advanced Studies in Education (Centro de Investigacion y Estudios Avanzados, Mexico).

His fields of research and expertise are the economics and the organization of post-secondary education and training, comparative education, lifelong learning, and, more generally, the role of education and training in cultural, social and economic development. He has also done extensive research work on the role of learning, knowledge creation and knowledge management in innovation in private industry, and especially in small and medium companies, as well as on university - industry collaboration. He has published several books and some 50 scholarly articles and book chapters as well as a number of other documents.

Selected Publications: 

Schuetze, H. G. (2010). The 'third mission' of universities: Community engagement and service. In P. Inman & H. G. Schuetze (Eds.), The community engagement and service mission of universities (pp. 13-32). Leicester (UK): NIACE.

Schuetze, H. G. (2008). Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society: From Concept to policy to practice? In L. Doyle, P. Welsh, D. Adams & J. Tibbitt (Eds.), Building stronger communities: Research informing policy and practice (pp. 21-34). Leicester, UK: NIACE.

Schuetze, H. G. (2007). Utopie oder Option? Überlegungen zu einer Politik lebenslangen Lernens (Utopia or policy option? Reflections on lifelong learning). Zeitschrift für Hochschulrecht, 6 (6), 177-188.

Schuetze, H. G. (2006). International concepts and agendas of Lifelong Learning. Compare 36(3), 289-306.

Schuetze, H. G. (2005). Modelle und Begründungen lebenslangen Lernens und die Rolle der Hochschulen - Internationale Perspektiven (International perspectives on models and rationales of lifelong learning and the role of higher education). In G. Wiesner & A. Wolter (Eds.), Die lernende Gesellschaft - Lernkulturen und Kompetenzentwicklung in der Wissensgesellschaft (Learning cultures and the development of competencies in the knowledge society) (pp. 225-244). Weinheim und München: Juventa Verlag.

Schuetze, H. G., & Slowey, M. (Eds.). (2000). Higher education and lifelong learners:International perspectives on change. London and New York: Routledge – Falmer.