Moderne universiteiten moeten crisis oplossen (en)

Under the leadership of the Polish Presidency, the Council for Education, Youth, Culture and Sport met in Brussels on Monday. The Ministers unanimously adopted recommendations for the modernisation of Europe’s higher education.

‘Today, many universities in Europe are not sufficiently prepared for the global competition over students, researchers and funding,’ Education Minister Krystyna Szumilas said on behalf of the Polish Presidency. She emphasised that European study programmes are often not adapted to the requirements of the labour market, and the worlds of science and business are too far apart.

‘The economic situation has exacerbated the situation of young people in the labour market. A good education can protect against unemployment,’ stressed Andrulla Vassiliou, European commissioner for education, youth, culture, sport and multilingualism. ‘The adopted conclusions are an expression of the desire to increase our efforts to modernise higher education,’ she added.

The Council urged Member States to cooperate with institutions of higher education. That will allow one of the key points of the Europe 2020 strategy to be fulfilled: by the end of the decade the number of young people (30-34 years) with higher education should reach 40% in Europe.

To effectively combat the economic crisis, EU Member States should strive for better cooperation between universities and the economy, as well as inspire schools to monitor and analyse the further careers of their graduates. Such analyses allow curricula to be modified so that graduates have a better chance of finding a satisfying employment and earnings.

The Council also expects EU Member States to ‘stimulate the development of entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation in all areas and within all courses of study.’ Stronger links between higher education and research are necessary. The Council encourages universities to enter into partnerships and cooperation with business, and Member States are encouraged to strengthen links between universities, employers and labour-market institutions.

The recommendations of the Education Council stressed the need to improve the quality of higher education through greater mobility of students and researchers, and more intensive cross-border cooperation. It is important not only to enable students to study after bachelor level at any European university (thanks to ECTS credits), but also for European universities to attract students and scholars from outside the EU.

The Council recommends that EU Member States introduce reforms that will allow for more flexible management of universities and an effective system of funding linked to performance and competitiveness.

It also expects EU Member States to promote interdisciplinary studies and research, as well as ‘fight against stereotypes and remove obstacles that still hamper the achievement at the highest levels of women in postgraduate education and research, especially in some disciplines and in management positions.’

In its conclusions adopted on Monday, the EU Education Council committed itself to work on a new, transparent system ranking schools of higher learning (U-Multirank), which will allow the proper evaluation of their performance and a comparison of their successes in a European-wide forum.

In the European Union there are over four thousand institutions of higher education educating 19 million students and employing 1.5 million teachers, scientists and researchers.