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The findings of the online survey, which the European University Association, EUA has organised on internationalisation has acknowledged that over 50% of European universities already had an internationalisation strategy and more than 90% believed that the EU strategy could bring added value. However, the EU universities need to be prepared to take on educational challenges that go beyond national borders.

Labour market and education

European labour market is rapidly changing: it is becoming more and more global, open and competitive. The demand for high skills is growing, and higher education – with its links to research and innovation – has a crucial role to play in equipping students with those skills. “Europe's growth and prosperity depend on it”, added the Commissioner.

At the same time students' expectations are changing too. In today's digital era, students want to choose what they learn, how and where they learn and when they learn. Courses offered online or blended forms of learning are becoming new ways to satisfy their individual needs and interests.

And the international higher education landscape is changing. Students from China, India and Korea have become the most mobile in the world. And the number of students in higher education worldwide is expected to increase fourfold, from around 100 million in 2000 to an estimated 400 million in 2030 – with Asia and Latin America in the lead. If there are today around 4 million internationally mobile students in the world, estimations indicate that it might grow to 7 million by 2020.

Reference: Speech/13/306: “Opening up higher education to the world and the new university ranking, U-Multirank”, 11 April 2013.

Changing mind set

The internationalisation of higher education is no longer just about students leaving their country to study abroad; it is about a whole change in mind set. Universities need broader strategies that go beyond mobility and cover many other types of academic cooperation such as joint degrees, support for capacity building, joint research projects, and distance learning programs. The concept of "internationalisation at home" is also a key to ensure that the majority (98%) of students, who are not in a position to study abroad, can nevertheless enjoy the benefits associated with international exposure.

European universities will have to attract more talent from around the world, and they will have to engage in cooperation with the new higher education hubs on other continents.

The EU has an important role to play in helping universities respond to these challenges, even if many already are. All member states –in combined efforts at all levels – shall make efforts to enable students to acquire quality higher education across Europe.

Changing the structures

Over the past two decades, EU programs have changed the face of higher education in Europe; for example, the Erasmus Program has been a driving force in making mobility part of the regular academic life of millions of students. It has also been an important catalyst in the reform and internationalisation of higher education systems. It paved the way for the Bologna Process and for associated tools such as learning outcomes, transferability of credits, and the EU-wide transparency and recognition tools; these have all contributed to better understanding and mutual trust between institutions in Europe, and beyond. Other EU programs, like Erasmus Mundus and Tempus, have followed but with a more global outreach.

“Erasmus for all”- international dimension

For the next EU funding period 2014-20, the Commission plans to deepen support for European universities; the new "Erasmus for All" program that has already been proposed would provide a policy framework and financial incentives for the internationalisation strategies of European universities.

This is actually one of the main novelties of the new program; the EU aim is to put an end to the current fragmentation of the various existing external higher education programs and to increase the synergies between the internal and external instruments.

The EU objectives are twofold: a) enhance the attractiveness and excellence of EU higher education and b) support the development and the modernisation of higher education systems in third countries.

Concretely, the new 'Erasmus for All' will support three types of actions:

- a stronger support will be put on degree mobility and more specifically on Joint Master degrees which will be offered by consortia of EU and non EU universities;  

- for the first time, the EU will open internal Erasmus program to non-EU universities, students and staff; and  

- focus in actions on the capacity building of high quality higher education systems in Third Countries.

Horizon 2020 – Marie Curie

The “Erasmus for All” program will be complemented by the Horizon 2020 program and its Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions for researchers. The Commission will continue to support their training and mobility at all levels in Europe and the rest of the world.

Presently, more than one fifth of the researchers recruited under Marie Curie have been non-Europeans. They bring much needed skills and talent to European universities and enterprises and the EU will maintain this strong international dimension.

All these new programs will help to attract talents to Europe and strengthen Europe's reputation as a provider of high quality, socially responsible higher education and research.

Financing education

This high level of educational ambition requires appropriate means. In this regard, the Commission proposed to allocate €17 billion to the new “Erasmus for All” program (an increase of 63.6% based on 2011 prices) including a strong increase for the international dimension of the program; at the same time a 21 per cent increase is proposed for the Marie Curie program.

Despite the agreement at the European Council, the investment for research and education will globally increase however to a lesser extent than expected. In particular, the money coming from the external dimension instruments for “Erasmus for All” might be seriously decreased and the Marie Curie program might face serious budgetary adjustments. All this will surely undermine the impact of Commission’s actions and it called on the European Parliament to support the internationalisation of higher education by allocating sufficient means.

Visa regulation

Besides the budgetary question, another issue is important for non-EU students as choosing the place to study and do research: it is visa regulations; this is also one of the three important factors identified in the survey launched by EUA.

Today too many non-EU students entering the EU are facing unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles as current rules for obtaining a student visa or a residence permit are often complex, lengthy and unclear.

The Education Commissioner together with home affairs Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström has proposed at the end of April 2012 measures to make it easier and more attractive for non-EU national students and researchers to come to Europe by modifying the relevant visa directives. Concretely, the new legislation will set clearer time limits for national authorities to decide on applications (maximum 60 days), provide for more opportunities to access the labour market during and after their studies and facilitate intra-EU movement. This is a very ambitious proposal which is now in the hands of the Member States and the European Parliament for adoption.

U-Multirank instrument

The Commission has launched in spring 2013 an important instrument as part of the EU modernisation agenda of higher education, and also as its internationalisation strategy: the new multidimensional ranking instrument, called U-Multirank.

U-Multirank is aimed at giving the EU and the member states a better picture of existing higher education landscape. The idea was -in order to raise quality- to see that education institutions know what they are doing and why; for this they need objective information about their strengths and weaknesses.

The predominant focus of existing rankings on research does not help improve the overall quality of higher education – which is much more than research excellence. Rankings are never perfect, as any valuable analysis has shown; even if some are more transparent than others, there is always a subjective element which can distort the picture. However, the Commission decided that rankings would be operational as an important instrument to raise education quality and relevance, with a clear and unprejudiced view of the methodologies that different rankings use.

The member states need to have a valuable U-Multirank as a tool for all types of institution, not just the top 500; and an institution – of whatever type – will be able to benchmark itself against its peers across borders in all corners of the world (for many, it will be the first time).

U-Multirank is not an end in itself; the Commission’s purpose is not to provide another blunt instrument on which reputations fall or rise, but to provide for a much more rounded, fairer and more accurate image.

It will see how international the EU education institutions are – because it is through international networks that they can deliver quality.

It will help the member states know how well they deliver teaching and learning; or transfer knowledge; or how they interact with their regions, to create skills and job opportunities and plough these back into the region.

And it will be user-driven; individual users will be able to produce their own personalised rankings, from a selection of institutions that meet their needs. In this way, U-Multirank will help students find the university or college that is right for them.

It will help institutions make strategic decisions based on knowledge about what they do well, or what they need to improve, compared to their peers. It will provide information that policy makers can use to guide their decision-making.

U-Multirank will not be a one-shot exercise; it is an evolving instrument that will need to improve over time. Positive thing is that the EUA has agreed to join the Advisory Board of U-Multirank, the input of great value.

The next six months are a key opportunity for universities to participate in the first round of the ranking to be published in 2014. In this way the EU will see the EUA on the Advisory Board, but also that many individual members will join U-Multirank. The Commission wants all stakeholders to be part of the process as U-Multirank is not an initiative which is done for the European universities but an initiative that will work in cooperation with the universities.

What is important in educational internationalisation is that all institutions of higher education realise that they have to position themselves one way or another in the face of globalisation.

Internationalisation is an opportunity not a threat; it can bring significant benefits for Europe, for the member states and for individual institutions.

All member state have a part to play in ensuring that young Europeans are educated and equipped with the skills they need to succeed on a rapidly changing employment market.

General reference: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-13-306_en.htm?locale=en

European indicators for education

Improving the EU’s performance in education is one of the key objectives of the EU- 2020 strategy, adopted by the European Council in June 2010. Targets on education are to increase the proportion of persons having completed tertiary education and to reduce the number of early leavers from education and training.

The Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, published the most recent data for the EU and the member states related to education.

Thus, share of population aged 30 to 34 in the EU-27 having completed tertiary education increased to 36% in 2012; however, share of early leavers from education and training was down to 13% in the same year.

In the EU-27, 36% of persons aged 30 to 34 had completed tertiary education in 2012, compared with 34% in 2010 and 28% in 2005. The Europe 2020 strategy’s target is that at least 40% of the population in this age group in the EU-27 should have completed tertiary education in 2020.

For early leavers from education and training, 13% of the population aged 18-24 in the EU-27 had at most lower secondary education and were currently not in further education or training, compared with 14% in 2010 and 16% in 2005. The target for 2020 for the EU-27 is to reduce the share to below 10%.

Source: European indicators for education; STAT/13/56, 11 April 2013: “Europe 2020 headline indicators on education”.

Member states’ examples

Proportion of those aged 30-34 who completed tertiary education ranges from 22% in Italy, Romania and Malta to 51% in Ireland.

In 2012, the highest proportions of those aged 30 to 34 having completed tertiary education were found in Ireland (51.1%), Cyprus (49.9%), Luxembourg (49.6%) and Lithuania (48.7%), and the lowest in Italy (21.7%), Romania (21.8%) and Malta (22.4%). Eight Member States have already met or exceeded their 2020 national targets for this indicator (Denmark, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden).

On average in the EU-27, a higher proportion of women aged 30 to 34 had completed tertiary education than men (40.0% compared with 31.6%). This was true for almost all Member States, with the largest gaps in Estonia, Latvia and Slovenia. For women, the proportion ranged from 23.2% in Romania to 57.9% in Ireland, while for men it varied between 17.2% in Italy and 50.4% in Luxembourg.

In 2012, the proportion of those aged 30 to 34 who had completed tertiary education increased compared with 2005 in all Member States. The proportion in particular almost doubled in Latvia (from 18.5% in 2005 to 37.0% in 2012), the Czech Republic (13.0% and 25.6%) and Romania (11.4% and 21.8%).

At the same time, share of early leavers from education and training ranges from 4% in Slovenia to 25% in Spain.

In 2012, the lowest proportions of the population aged 18-24 who had at most lower secondary education and were currently not in further education or training were observed in Slovenia (4.4%), Slovakia (5.3%), the Czech Republic (5.5%) and Poland (5.7%), and the highest in Spain (24.9%), Malta (22.6%) and Portugal (20.8%). Nine Member States have already met or exceeded their 2020 national targets for this indicator (the Czech Republic, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia and Sweden).

On average in the EU-27, a lower proportion of women were early leavers from education and training than men (11.0% compared with 14.5%). This was true for all Member States, except Bulgaria.

In 2012, the proportion of early leavers from education and training decreased compared with 2005 in all Member States, except Poland and the United Kingdom. The most notable decrease was registered in Portugal (from 38.8% in 2005 to 20.8% in 2012).

Reference: STAT/13/56, 11.04.2013; and  

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_STAT-13-56_en.htm?locale=en