News
13.11.2007
Campus Europae = Erasmus +
The Campus Europae Conference on Student Mobility in Europe, jointly organized with the European People's Party, took place in the European Parliament last Thursday 8th of November. Attendance to the seminar was strong, with rooms overcrowded at all times by means of a healthy mix of students, Parliamentarians, representatives of Campus Europae, members of the European Commission and press. Also in attendance were the European Council of Student Affairs (ECSTA) and the European Student Union (ESU), along with the assistants of several other parliamentarians who took interest in the initiative but were unable to attend due to agenda conflicts.
The main points on the agenda were the social dimension of student exchange, the interdependence between the Bologna Process and the Lisbon Agenda and the future perspectives of student exchange and University cooperation in the context of the European Higher Education Area, with key speeches being delivered respectively by M.E.P Doris Pack, Commissioner Ján Figel’ and Prof. Jürgen Kohler.
A great deal of interventions touched on the sensible matters of how to improve on the currently existing student exchange financing mechanisms. Widespread agreement followed the discussion on how to improve their reach and efficiency, with proposals being two-folded: firstly to take into account the difference of living costs between the university of origin and destination in the design of grants schemes; secondly, and more importantly, to attract and combine private funding with the Commission’s budget, in order to reach a significantly higher number of students – a proposal which overlaps positively with Campus Europae’s “Bologna Meets Lisbon” project. With regards the strategic role of student exchange it was seen as an area on which European Universities have the responsibility to provide for a high-quality integrated approach to student services - a fundamental element which the external dimension of the Bologna Process can be levered upon.
Both the European Commission and the members of the European Parliament present endorsed the efforts of the Campus Europae member universities and found the project to be worth of “full political and institutional support” as it indeed constitutes a best practice example with regards enhancing the quality of student exchange and raising awareness for European citizenship. Campus Europae is fully aligned with the current Lifelong Learning Programme and in some aspects aspires to go well beyond the envisaged objectives, as Commissioner Figel’ noted while nicknaming it “Erasmus Plus”.