News
16.12.2009
Campus Europae contribution to EU Commission Green Paper
Campus Europae has just published its contribution to the European Commission Green Paper on promoting the learning mobility of young people. Campus Europae remarks and proposals broadly concern five areas where further progress would be easily attainable and could have a profound impact in furthering mobility.
Firstly outgoing students should be considerably better informed, be it on practical matters such as financing or in academic issues such as courses options – improving the quality of the information commonly available would empower students to make informed choices and do away with myths that are detrimental to increasing the number of mobile students. This effort would yield an even greater impact if ways could be found to further institutional responsibility for promoting mobility – universities must take center stage in rallying their students to embark on a period of studies abroad if mobility is to become a rule rather than an exception.
Other dimension of student exchange that requires renewed efforts towards improvement is academic recognition, which according to the latest studies remains hugely problematic. The same applies to language learning, and yet Campus Europae has set forth very successful experiences in dealing with both issues. Another recommendation concerns the need to not over regulate internships, which are by virtue of their nature potent instruments to foster collaboration across sectors (academic, business, industry, civil society). In fact CE considers that it is of utmost importance to have an open-minded and experimental attitude towards improving student mobility programmes - this can be accomplished through establishing "open laboratories" where innovation can be developed and tested as a way to safeguard the continuous improvement of Erasmus.
The document is available for download here (pdf format).