Doors open to the world

In the year when the 20th anniversary of the Erasmus programme is being celebrated, the EU is re-launching Erasmus Mundus in the grand style and throwing open the doors of the universities of its 27 member states to students from all over the world. At the same time the need is emerging to improve the whole educational system, beginning with primary and secondary schools. A MOTOR OF CHANGE. “Erasmus gives many students at European universities the chance to live in a foreign country for the first time and has acquired the status of a socio-cultural phenomenon”, says JOSÉ MANUEL BARROSO , President of the European Commission. Barroso assigns to the programme of higher education, introduced by the then EEC in the summer of 1987, a value that transcends its purely educational aim. If little more than 3,000 students participated in the first year of Erasmus, today that number has risen to 150,000 per year, almost 1% of the overall student population. “Over the last twenty years well over one and a half million students, 60% of them women, have benefited from Erasmus scholarships and the Commission intends to reach a total of 3 million by 2012”. These are the declared objectives of the team of Barroso, who points out that Erasmus “has been and continues to be a motor of change for European higher education”.YOUTH FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD . The “younger brother” of Erasmus is called Erasmus Mundus. It defines itself as “a programme of cooperation and mobility in the field of higher education that aims at promoting in the world the image of the European Union as a centre of excellence for learning”. Created in 2004, it has already permitted 2325 youth, from a hundred or so nations and from 323 different universities, to deepen their knowledge by spending a medium or long period of study in London, Lyon, Frankfurt, Prague or Athens. Evaluating positively the results so far achieved, the Commission adopted in recent days a proposal “aimed at launching the new generation of the Erasmus Mundus programme for the period 2009-13”, and pursuing the objective of “promoting European higher education as a centre of excellence in the world”.MODERNIZING EU UNIVERSITIES. So 1826 students from many non-EU countries will be arriving in the universities of member states in September this year to begin a period of study or a doctorate as part of the Erasmus Mundus programme. Over the next five years, “just over 950 million euros will be placed at the disposal of European universities and third countries to participate together in joint programmes or partnerships and to grant scholarships to European and non-European youth to enable them to acquire an international experience”. This programme has so far “proven its value – explains Commissioner for Education JÁN FIGEL -, by encouraging the creation of high quality postgraduate courses in Europe and attracting outstanding students [of other nationalities] to our universities”. “Erasmus Mundus – adds the Slovak Commissioner – has made an important contribution to the modernization of the universities of the Union, in a context of the globalization of higher education. We must now consolidate the results obtained, but we must also go a step further and widen the programme’s range to ensure that Erasmus Mundus becomes the tangible sign of EU cooperation with third countries in the field of higher education”. The new approach will take the form “of a whole range of activities comprising joint doctoral programmes, increased financial support for students and partnerships with particular regions of the world which will be wholly to the advantage of the participants”. SCHOOLS IN STEP WITH THE TIMES. A public consultation launched by the European Commission on “Schools for the 21st century” will last three months, until 15 October. The aim of the questionnaire, composed of eight questions, is to gather opinions and suggestions “on the development and modernization of school education in member states”. Available in all the official languages of the EU (info: http://ec.europa.eu/education/school21/index_en.html), the questionnaire is addressed at teachers, families, students themselves, headmasters, educational experts, and regional and local authorities of primary and secondary education. In proposing this consultation, the Executive has been prompted by a series of data that are considered “alarming”: the high number of school dropouts; the fact that “one young person out of five fails to acquire a basic ability to read”; the disparities between the sexes that can be ascertained at the educational level; and the “lack of potential in EU countries for the study of particular subjects like maths and science”. The Commission thus intends to define some sectors of cooperation at the EU level to “support member states in their efforts to modernize national educational systems”, albeit in respect for the principle of subsidiarity. the questionnaire is addressed at teachers, families, students themselves, headmasters, educational experts, and regional and local authorities of primary and secondary education. In proposing this consultation, the Executive has been prompted by a series of data that are considered “alarming”: the high number of school dropouts; the fact that “one young person out of five fails to acquire a basic ability to read”; the disparities between the sexes that can be ascertained at the educational level; and the “lack of potential in EU countries for the study of particular subjects like maths and science”. The Commission thus intends to define some sectors of cooperation at the EU level to “support member states in their efforts to modernize national educational systems”, albeit in respect for the principle of subsidiarity.