Discours d'ouverture de Mme Vassiliou, Commissaire Européen à l'Education, la Culture, la Jeunesse et le Multilinguisme.
Retrouvez le discours de la Commissaire européenne pour le lancement national Erasmus +. Voir l'article...

Aujourd'hui 26 septembre 2014, la journée européenne des langues fête son treizième anniversaire.
Créée en 2001 à l'initiative du Conseil de l'Europe, elle a pour but d'encourager et promouvoir l'apprentissage des langues et la diversité culturelle.
De nombreux évènements sont prévus à travers les 47 Etats membres célébrant le multilinguisme. Un peu partout en France, associations, centres culturels, Maisons de l'Europe, etc., organisent des activités ouvertes au public : expositions, jeux linguistiques, débats, « speak-dating », etc. Voir l'article...

Funds for education have not increased in OECD countries in relation to their growing number of students in the past years. Data from the OECD’s report Education at a Glance shows a notable trend where higher education institutions turn to private funding sources. The European Students’ Union (ESU) is concerned that this may affect the equality and access to higher education.
Many key groups of society continue to be excluded, despite that these countries experience a significant increase in attendance at the tertiary level. The education level of people’s parents has a large impact on participation in higher education. 65 per cent of young adults that obtained qualifications at the tertiary level had parents with the same level of education. Only 23 per cent of those that completed tertiary education had parents without such qualifications. The report concluded that it was important to ensure access to and success in tertiary education and to address inequalities at the earliest stages of schooling. More...

Around 120 student representatives, policy-makers and experts in higher education gathered in Florence, Italy, on Sunday 28 September for the 28th European Students’ Convention and the first annual conference of the Peer Assessment of Student-Centred Learning (PASCL) project.
Student-centred learning is a cross-cutting theme of this conference co-organised by the European Students’ Union (ESU) and the national union of students in Italy (UdU) with support of the European University Institute (EUI). More...

A joint policy seminar held in Brussels on 25 September focused on the ET2020 agenda and its new approaches towards social inclusion and (higher) education in relation to the SiS Catalyst project and European policy-making.
The European Students’ Union (ESU) was invited to discuss subjects such as equity, social cohesion and active citizenship. Questions such as why the voices of children, youth and students matter in the policy debate were put forth and steps for combating institutional gender inequality discussed. The participants also debated if the higher education system in Europe is fit for a purpose beyond 2020 and how national access plans can be used as tools in that respect. More...

The European Students’ Union (ESU) looks forward to following the hearings that the European Parliament launched today with the newly introduced designates for the European Commission. Those hearings are a part of their approval process, based on nominations from Jean-Claude Juncker, who is the President of the European Commission designate.
ESU is relieved to see that education remains as an integral component within this proposal contrary to rumours previously circulating in the media. A wider group of European Commissioners will lead policy areas that will impact students and education in one way or another. It will be challenging for the European Commission to coordinate this work but there is also a potential for having a greater impact. More...

Education remains a priority in the European Commission’s portfolios according to Jean-Claude Juncker’s proposal for a new line-up, but may be restructured in relation to policies for skills, employment and education. ESU is concerned about the long-term impact that this may have on policies and coordination in higher education.
It has been confirmed that Unit A3 (Skills and Qualification Strategies; Multilingualism Policy) and Unit B2 (Vocational Training and Adult Education) will move from the Directorate-General for Education and Culture (DG EAC) to the Directorate-General for Employment (DG EMPL), Social Affairs and Inclusion. The aim of the move is clearly to create a packaged approach to issues concerning skills and employment due to the serious economic situation in Europe. More...

The financing of higher education has become an increasingly important discussion topic in European policy-making processes. This subject has been addressed in several reports and will set the agenda of major events in the upcoming months. However, the European Students’ Union (ESU) has growing concerns about the frame of those discussions.
Meetings of the Bologna Follow-up Group, Directors General of the European Commission, Council of the European Union and the funding forum of the European University Association, are on among the European events that address the funding of higher education institutions. In addition, following ESU’s project called Financing the Students’ Future (FinSt) the European Commission also released the report “Do changes in cost-sharing have an impact on the behaviour of students and higher education institutions?”. More...

The Erasmus Impact Study brings evidence of the need to continue to improve funding schemes and implement strategies to widen access to mobility programmes in higher education. The European Commission presented the findings of this report on 22 September.
Although student mobility has been increasing over the past years and the amount of students from a lower socioeconomic background has increased proportionally, mobility still remains a privilege of the few.. According to the survey, financial reasons constitute the biggest obstacle for mobility for more than fifty per cent of non-mobile students. This can for example be due to uncertainty about the costs of the study abroad or insufficient financial support. More than twenty per cent of the students claimed that the supporting grant would be insufficient to cover the costs. More...

Indian universities have never done very well in any of the major university rankings. The Times of India reports the widespread belief that this is because “the ranking being skewed to technical and humanities universities and international parameters not being applicable to the Indian system.”  Now, there is a move to create a new ranking designed specifically for Indian universities.  An announcement was issued following a recent meeting of the Council of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
Source
Times of India. More...