EUROPE
EU to prioritise deeper HE cooperation and mobility
European leaders and the European Commission have backed proposals to step up higher education mobility and exchanges and create a network of European universities with integrated study programmes and curricula that enable students to study abroad.The plans signal a new era in which education and culture will be put high on the European Union’s agenda after years of being a low priority, according to the European University Association.
European heads of state or government, meeting at an informal summit at Gothenburg in Sweden on 17 November, supported the measures to deepen higher education cooperation and agreed to:
- • Promote mutual recognition of upper secondary education diplomas and the development of new curricula allowing for exchanges across European high school systems.
- • Promote multilingualism by aiming at all students speaking at least two additional European languages.
- • Launch a reflection on the ‘Future of Learning’ to respond to future trends and the digital revolution, including artificial intelligence.
- • Promote the mobility and participation of students in cultural activities through a ‘European Student Card’.
They had met to discuss the social dimension of Europe, including education and culture and responses to the challenges of digitalisation, future skills demands and the rise of ‘fake’ news, xenophobia and extremism.
That the discussion of education and culture was the first debate under the European Leaders’ Agenda signalled that education and culture are being given a higher priority than in the past.
Following the meeting, European Council President Donald Tusk said they had constructive discussion about eight ideas, which “were suggested not by Brussels, not by the institutions, but by member states”.
“One example is to make the Erasmus programme more inclusive, so that an increasing number of Europeans benefit from getting to know each other’s cultures, while living and studying in another EU country.
“The second example is the European Student Card, which started out as a cooperation between France and Italy. It was later expanded to cover Germany and Ireland. Now the idea is to extend the geographical scope of this initiative and to offer cardholders access to cultural sites and activities across Europe.”
Tusk said that during the meeting “we established political support for these ideas” and “will make sure that this support is included in the conclusions of the European Council”. The financial aspect of the plans will have to be reflected in the next multi-annual budget discussion.
New European Education Area
However, the proposals are broadly similar to those put forward by the European Commission, as its own contribution to the meeting. It advocated the creation of a European Education Area by 2025, in which spending time to study, learn or work in another member state is the norm, school-leaving and higher education diplomas are mutually recognised, and world-class universities are able to work together seamlessly across borders.
Ahead of the meeting, President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker said: “Education and culture are the key to the future – both for the individual as well as for our Union as a whole. It is how we turn circumstance into opportunity, how we turn mirrors into windows and how we give roots to what it means to be 'European', in all its diversity.
“We must seize the opportunity and make sure education and culture are the drivers for job creation, economic growth, social fairness and ultimately unity.”
The commission argues that at a time when European values and democracies are being tested by awakening populist forces at home and abroad or by the spreading of ‘fake news’ and the manipulation of our information networks, this is the moment when European leaders and EU institutions must react.
In an official communication, Strengthening European Identity through Education and Culture, addressed to the European Parliament and European Council – submitted to the leaders' meeting in Gothenburg – the commission identified a set of key challenges that can be addressed via education and culture.
These include continued digitisation, automation, artificial intelligence and the need to keep up with technological progress; the future of work and future needs for skills and competences; the need to share the benefits of growth; an ageing workforce and the need to integrate culturally diverse immigrant populations; the rise of social media and ‘fake’ news; and the flaring of populism and xenophobia, the risk of violent radicalisation and the need to strengthen the sense of belonging together.
The commission argues that education is part of the solution to get more people into decent jobs, respond better to the economy's skills needs and strengthen Europe's resilience in a context of the rapid and profound changes induced by the technological revolution and globalisation.
Although the primary responsibility for education and culture policies lies with the member states, over the years the European Union has played an “important complementary role”, the commission says, which it is now seeking to strengthen.
The European Commission’s proposals for a European Area of Education include:
- • Making mobility a reality for all, by expanding participation in the Erasmus+ student and staff exchange programme and the European Solidarity Corps and creating an EU Student Card to offer a user-friendly way to store information on a person’s academic records.
- • Mutual recognition of diplomas by initiating a ‘Sorbonne process’, building on the ‘Bologna process’, to prepare the ground for the mutual recognition of higher education and school-leaving diplomas.
- • Improving language learning by setting a new benchmark for all young Europeans finishing upper secondary school to have a good knowledge of two languages in addition to their mother language by 2025.
- • Promoting lifelong learning by seeking convergence and increasing the share of people engaging in learning throughout their lives with the aim of reaching 25% by 2025.
- • Creating a network of European universities so that world-class European universities can work seamlessly together across borders, as well as supporting the establishment of a School of European and Transnational Governance.
- • Investing in education by using the European semester to support structural reforms to improve education policy, using EU funding and EU investment instruments to fund education and setting a benchmark for member states to invest 5% of gross domestic product in education.
“By 2025 we should live in a Europe in which learning, studying and doing research is not hampered by borders but where spending time in another member state to study, learn or work is the norm."
Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, Tibor Navracsics, said: "As we look to Europe's future, we need to equip ourselves with an ambitious, shared agenda for how we can use culture and learning as a driver for unity.”
‘Timely and relevant’
The European University Association or EUA, representing 850 institutions in 47 European countries, welcomed the commission’s initiative as “timely” and “highly relevant”.
It said: “EUA supports the commission’s call for even closer cooperation between European universities, underpinned by the elimination of administrative and legal obstacles and the provision of adequate funding.”
It said future EU funding programmes should not only focus on mobility, but also support universities in their efforts to improve provision, also through digital means and for lifelong learning.
And it warned that collaboration at the policy level within the EU through a new initiative like the European Education Area would need careful alignment with existing frameworks such as the Bologna Process, whose geographical scope goes far beyond the EU and includes governments and stakeholders alike.
It said the European Commission should consider initiatives under the Renewed EU Agenda for Higher Education launched in May and the European Research Area. “Policy fragmentation and the creation of parallel processes should be avoided,” it said.
New sense of optimism
Thomas Jørgensen, senior policy coordinator at the EUA, said none of the proposals of the EU leaders or the commission will become a reality unless member states choose to implement them, but where there is the political will among what will be 27 member states after Brexit, they will go ahead.
He believes there is a concrete will to establish the proposed European network of universities to promote research and education.
He said there also appears to be a lot of faith in the Erasmus programme being able to solve problems beyond student mobility, but this will require “10 times as much money” and much will depend on what is decided on spending in the next funding period of the EU or the financial framework.
Establishing mutual recognition of secondary school and higher education diplomas is “more tricky”, he said.
But the fact that both the commission and the European leaders were pushing a similar range of steps on higher education gave grounds for a new sense of optimism.
“We have seen for the period of this commission and for many years that research and higher education have been a lower priority, not something member states wanted to spend on at the European level. But this has changed. We have education back among the central priorities," Jørgensen said.