EUROPE: Erasmus Mundus gets good marks

The European Commission's Erasmus Mundus programme of 2004-08, designed to promote the EU as a global 'centre of excellence' in learning, has been judged a success though changes in financing may have to be made if it is to continue in its present form.

The view of an independent, external evaluation team is that the 2004-08 programme has been effective in achieving its stated objectives and has created a significant community-added value.

The EUR300 million (US$421 million) project succeeded in bringing together some of the best higher education institutions in the EU to offer 103 new and innovative joint masters programmes, which were unlikely to have been created without the programme, the team's report says.

But it acknowledges that a majority of coordinators and partners currently participating in Erasmus Mundus do not believe the courses they are involved in could continue in their present form without continued EU funding.

As the longer-term sustainability of Erasmus Mundus was likely to require a reduction in the level of EU funding for scholarships attached to individual courses, the report says it is clear that solutions other than the 'status quo' had to be found if many courses were to continue.

The commission said it agreed with the need to ensure the sustainability of courses and had put a strong accent on this in the first call of the new 2009-13 programme. But it added that "the commission deems it necessary to reflect further on the future of the scholarships system.

"For example, this may in future become separated from the support given to excellent courses, with scholarships attributed as a function of the courses' capacity to attract students."

Erasmus Mundus offers financial support for institutions and scholarships for individuals covering masters and doctorates. The report says these masters programmes are considered to be of high quality by academics and current and former Erasmus Mundus students consulted during the evaluation.

They have also generally managed to attract large numbers of applications from third-country students, its report says.

The evaluation team commented that while the geographical distribution of participating institutions was broadly balanced, institutions from new member states remained proportionally under-represented.

The high academic level and content of courses was the characteristic most frequently seen by course coordinators to add value over and above mainstream or domestic masters courses in the same discipline.

But although the general standard of support to students and academic facilities was rated highly, the evaluation suggests that, in some cases, more could be done to improve coherence between the curricula taught at different participating institutions and the different training paths offered to students.

"More structured formats, with common courses and a more limited number of study tracks, can facilitate course integration. Moreover courses have frequently encountered difficulties in recruiting the expected numbers of EU students... this was often because of the level of fees charged by the courses ...and the absence of scholarships for EU students in the 2004-2008 programme."

alan.osborn@uw-news.com