By Ben Jongbloed. In its recent communication “Supporting Growth and Jobs: An agenda for the modernisation of Europe’s higher education systems”, the European Commission once again urged universities to reform human resources policies – to increase their autonomy around human resources issues and to introduce incentives to reward excellence in teaching and research.
Europe’s universities will need to recruit academics by flexible, open and transparent procedures and to provide them with attractive career prospects. Without a committed and adequately compensated professoriate, universities will find it hard to recruit the best and brightest academics to work for them and to provide the teaching and research that Europe needs in order to be a competitive, knowledge-driven region. When comparing the attractiveness of the academic profession between European countries, salaries are naturally a key place to start.
When we compare European countries such as Italy, the United Kingdom, France, The Netherlands and Germany with the United States, and take into account international differences in purchasing power, Italy displays the widest salary range between entry-level, medium-level and top-level positions. Like the UK, it offers relatively high salaries to senior academics. The UK compares relatively well with the US, judging from the average academic salary. For entry-level positions (for example, assistant professor) the salaries are lower and higher for top-end positions.
French universities are not particularly attractive to foreign professors due to France's national career framework and non-competitive salaries. Hiring is very centralised, with a national screening of candidates by national councils. Until recently, institutional salary policies were not allowed, but this is changing. A bonus system to reward performance in teaching and research has recently been introduced, alongside laws to increase the autonomy of universities and to introduce more differentiation among academics. More...

Présentation
L'Union européenne encourage la mobilité des citoyens désireux d'étudier ou de se former dans un autre Etat membre.
Le programme d'éducation et de formation tout au long de la vie géré au sein de l'agence nationale, propose des aides financières aux étudiants, aux élèves et apprentis, aux demandeurs d'emploi mais aussi aux tuteurs, aux formateurs, aux enseignants, aux conseillers, à tous ceux qui sont concernés par la formation et l'insertion professionnelles.
Les bourses sont en général allouées directement aux institutions ou aux organismes de placement en entreprises (organismes de formation, universités, ANPE, conseils régionaux, etc.) qui reversent aux stagiaires des allocations individuelles forfaitaires.
Le portfolio Europass permet à toute personne en mobilité de faire reconnaître son parcours de formation initiale, continue et professionnelle.
Vous êtes étudiant, découvrez l’entreprise à travers un stage professionnel
Vous êtes étudiant, préparez votre insertion professionnelle et familiarisez-vous avec le monde de l’entreprise dans le cadre d'ERASMUS.
Pendant votre cursus ou en fin de cursus, vous pouvez valider un stage professionnel de 3 à 12 mois, sur le principe de la reconnaissance de la période effectuée dans l’entreprise d’accueil.
Prenez contact avec le service des relations internationales ou le service des stages de votre établissement d'enseignement supérieur.
Vous êtes demandeur d'emploi ou récemment diplômé, saisissez l'opportunité d’un stage professionnel en Europe
Vous pouvez bénéficier d'une bourse de mobilité LEONARDO DA VINCI pour effectuer un stage dans une entreprise située dans un autre pays européen.
Votre demande ne peut se faire de façon individuelle: rapprochez-vous d'un organisme basé en France qui a déposé un projet de mobilité et qui vous aidera à préparer votre départ: préparation pédagogique, linguistique et culturelle.
Si votre profil professionnel correspond aux critères de sélection de cet organisme, vous pouvez le contacter pour obtenir davantage de précisions sur les modalités d'attribution de cette bourse de mobilité Leonardo sous réserve de places disponibles.
Liste des organismes qui proposent, en France, des stages Leonardo da Vinci.
Vous êtes éducateur, formateur d'adultes
Vous souhaitez travailler avec des européens impliqués dans la formation d'adultes et l'éducation tout au long de la vie, le programme GRUNDTVIG vous propose de monter des partenariats avec des organismes de plusieurs pays en Europe et d'analyser ensemble des problématiques de votre choix. En savoir plus sur les partenariats éducatifs.
Si vous souhaitez suivre une action de formation continue pour renouveler ou enrichir vos pratiques de formation, vous pouvez solliciter une bourse de formation d’adultes. En savoir plus sur les bourses pour formateur d'adultes.

By Carmen Paun. The European Commission’s higher education head has defended the European Union’s planned U-Multirank university rankings system against its critics. Jordi Curell, director of lifelong learning, higher education and international affairs at the directorate general for education and culture, conceded that there was opposition to its development.
"When we started working on the project of U-Multirank, many people from the higher education community were opposed to it,” he told an international symposium on university rankings and quality assurance in Brussels on 12 April.
But the system had intrinsic value, he said, because it would provide an evidence-based measure of the performance of European universities that would help them improve. According to Curell, if higher education is to help Europe emerge from its current financial and economic crisis, the EU needs to know how its universities are performing and universities need to know how they are doing.
"Rankings which are carefully thought out are the only transparency tools which can give a comparative picture of higher education institutions at a national, European and global level," he told the symposium.
in March the UK House of Lords’ European Union committee called the initiative a waste of money. Its report argued that U-Multirank brought nothing new to a market already crowded by other international ranking systems, such as those developed by China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Times Higher Education magazine and QS. But Brussels plans to plough ahead regardless. The commission announced in March that it would spend €4 million (US$5.2 million) testing its newly developed ranking system. It has asked higher education specialists to compete for a contract to pilot the tool. The results of this pilot will be published at the end of 2013. Curell told the symposium that generally, a reluctance to support rankings had evolved. But while they might not reflect the full diversity of reality, rankings shape the perception of that reality.
He advised representatives of higher education institutions present at the event to try to influence how rankings develop rather than opposing the trend. He stressed that U-Multirank would be international in scope. “This tool should not and will not be confined to the EU since higher education is today a global issue." And he agreed that work needed to be done to improve its data – by ensuring that a critical mass of universities from both inside and outside the EU was convinced to participate.
Also, he stressed that the pilot would involve devising a long-term business model for the system, which would not be run by the commission, but an independent operator. Waldemar Siwinksi, vice-president of the IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence, argued at the meeting that a media organisation would be the best fit for the job if it worked with a research institution and a data gathering organisation. This model already exists in Britain, where Times Higher Education magazine manages and publishes the World University Rankings in cooperation with Thomson Reuters, he noted. Meanwhile, he called on international university ranking systems providers to include more data from national ranking systems when drafting their league tables. Siwinksi explained that for most students, international rankings are far less important than national ones.
“The majority of students still study in their own countries,” he argued. “International students constitute only 2% of the whole student population in the world.”
He said national rankings offered prospective students a picture of the cultural environment in which universities operated. They could also help universities improve their performance, and so it would be valuable to incorporate their data into global ranking systems. Siwinksi linked the high scores US, British, German and Japanese universities obtain in international rankings to the existence of strong national ranking systems, which have helped spark management reforms. Professor Andrea Bonaccorsi, of the Italian national agency for evaluation, universities and research institutes (ANVUR), said he hoped that by 2015 there would be a sustainable and small number of efficient global ranking systems vetted by independent audits.

Proposition de résolution sur « Erasmus pour tous », le programme de l'Union européenne pour l'éducation, la formation, la jeunesse et le sport
Rapport n° 495 (2011-2012) de Mme Dominique GILLOT, fait au nom de la commission de la culture, de l'éducation et de la communication, déposé le 4 avril 2012. Disponible au format PDF.
INTRODUCTION.
Une proposition de règlement établissant un programme unique de l’Union européenne pour l’éducation, la formation, la jeunesse et le sport, adoptée par la Commission européenne le 23 novembre 2011, a été transmise au Sénat au mois de décembre dernier, en application de l’article 88-4 de la Constitution. Conformément à l’article 73 quinquies du Règlement du Sénat, votre commission est appelée à examiner la proposition de résolution déposée par notre collègue Colette Mélot au nom de la commission des affaires européennes, sur ce nouveau programme intitulé « Erasmus pour tous ».
Afin de remplir les objectifs de la stratégie « Europe 2020 » de l’Union européenne au service d’ « une croissance intelligente, durable et inclusive », la Commission européenne a proposé, en effet, une nouvelle base légale en vue de réunir au sein d’un programme unique l’ensemble des mécanismes européens et internationaux actuellement mis en oeuvre dans les domaines de l’éducation, de la formation, de la jeunesse et du sport. Votre rapporteure souligne que les motivations qui sous-tendent cette fusion sont principalement de deux ordres:
- dans un souci de valorisation du capital humain de l’Union européenne, il s’agit de rendre les programmes communautaires plus accessibles, de favoriser la capitalisation des parcours, expériences et formations, de développer l’emploi des jeunes et de faciliter leur mobilité universitaire et professionnelle;
- dans le cadre des perspectives financières de l’Union européenne pour la période 2014-2020, il s’agit de consacrer des moyens renforcés à l’action communautaire en faveur de l’employabilité des jeunes et de la formation continue, tout en poursuivant des objectifs de rationalisation, de simplification et de lisibilité des programmes.
Une première position commune du Conseil sur la proposition de règlement de la Commission européenne devrait intervenir le 11 mai 2012. Le vote en commission et la lecture en séance plénière au Parlement européen sont, eux, prévus pour le 9 octobre 2012.
I. LA POLITIQUE COMMUNAUTAIRE EN MATIÈRE D'ÉDUCATION ET DE FORMATION DOIT ÊTRE REPENSÉE DANS LE CADRE DE LA STRATÉGIE « EUROPE 2020 »
A. DES PROGRAMMES AU SUCCÈS CONSIDÉRABLE MAIS DISPERSÉS ET INSUFFISAMMENT COORDONNÉS
1. Des succès indiscutables
2. Une multiplicité de dispositifs qui pose la question de la rationalisation et de la simplification des structures
B. UN NOUVEAU PROGRAMME AU SERVICE DE LA VALORISATION DU CAPITAL HUMAIN DE L'UNION EUROPÉENNE
1. Un effort soutenu renouvelé en faveur du capital humain pour la période 2014-2020
2. Les principales dispositions de la proposition de règlement « Erasmus pour tous »
a) Une nouvelle approche pour la mobilité
b) L'inclusion d'un chapitre spécifique consacré au sport
c) Une démarche renforcée d'évaluation de la gestion et de la performance
d) La mise en place d'un mécanisme européen de garantie des prêts au bénéfice des étudiants de master
e) Un budget considérablement renforcé dans le cadre des perspectives financières pour la période 2014-2020
II. LA COMMISSION DES AFFAIRES EUROPÉENNES RÉAFFIRME SON SOUTIEN À UNE POLITIQUE COMMUNAUTAIRE AMBITIEUSE EN FAVEUR DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DU CAPITAL HUMAIN
A. LA COMMISSION DES AFFAIRES EUROPÉENNES SOUSCRIT AUX OBJECTIFS FONDAMENTAUX DE LA PROPOSITION DE RÈGLEMENT
B. LA PROPOSITION DE RÉSOLUTION APPELLE LES AUTORITÉS COMMUNAUTAIRES À MODIFIER LA PROPOSITION DE RÈGLEMENT SUR UN CERTAIN NOMBRE DE POINTS
C. LES POSITIONS DÉFENDUES PAR LES GOUVERNEMENTS ET PARLEMENTS NATIONAUX DES ÉTATS MEMBRES
1. Les positions défendues par le Gouvernement français au sein du comité de l'éducation du Conseil de l'Union européenne
2. Les positions défendues par le gouvernement britannique
3. Les positions défendues par les parlements nationaux d'autres États membres
a) Le Bundesrat allemand
b) Le Sénat italien
c) La Chambre des députés du Grand-duché du Luxembourg
III. VOTRE COMMISSION SOUTIENT L'ADOPTION PAR LE SÉNAT DE LA PROPOSITION DE RÉSOLUTION DE LA COMMISSION DES AFFAIRES EUROPÉENNES
EXAMEN EN COMMISSION
LA PROPOSITION DE RÉSOLUTION ADOPTÉE PAR LA COMMISSION DE LA CULTURE, DE L'ÉDUCATION ET DE LA COMMUNICATION
LISTE DES PERSONNES AUDITIONNÉES.

The European Commission has published a new call for proposals for the development of Knowledge Alliances. Following the recent EU-Australia Education and Training Policy Dialogue, a joint statement has been published outlining next steps for cooperation, including future policy dialogues.
Call for proposals – Pilot Project for the development of Knowledge Alliances
The Commission has published a new call for proposals on the development of Knowledge Alliances. Following last year's call, the European Parliament has decided to allocate for 2012 one million euros to the further development of this pilot action.
The Knowledge Alliances, part of the Innovation Union flagship initiative of the Europe 2020 strategy, are structured partnerships between education institutions and innovation players, aiming at developing Europe's innovation potential. According to the Commission, this call and the selected projects will also contribute to the preparations for the implementation of the forthcoming Erasmus for All Programme, with a view to a much greater scope for Knowledge Alliances in future. To find out more, please read the Call for proposals. Deadline is 28 June 2012.

4th EU-Australia Education and Training Policy Dialogue on International Education
Last month saw the 4th EU-Australia Education and Training Policy Dialogue organised by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and Culture (DG EAC) and the Australian Department of Innovation, Industry, Science, Research and Tertiary Education (DIISRTE). The theme of  the meeting was international education with a particular focus on quality of provision, well-being of students and mobility.
The parties decided on a number of next steps for cooperation, including future policy dialogues in the areas of quality and recognition (2013) and lifelong learning (2014), a continuation of the bilateral mobility cooperation projects and a Joint Expert Seminar to take place in October 2012 in Australia. To find out more, download the Joint Statement here.

By Anne Corbett and Sacha Garben. Making space and time for blue skies thinking is a research dilemma of our times. Funders are typically interested in short-term results. Will it be the same for higher education when ministers from 47 European countries meet in Bucharest on 26-27 April for the 2012 Bologna ministerial conference?
There will also be stakeholders and the Europe Commission, flanked by representatives of 50 or more countries outside Europe and 30 international organisations, which will be having their say in the accompanying Bologna Policy Forum. The fiscal crisis, with its fall-out for European economies, makes the blue skies issue more relevant. The most common governmental reaction is that cuts must be imposed.
But if higher education is a necessary bridge between education, understanding and advancing knowledge, and if the experience of higher education helps society as a whole adjust to major social change as well as benefiting individuals, are there not alternatives?
A workshop at the London School of Economics and Political Science last month, organised by its European Institute and the Jean Monnet Centre, was convened to discuss the evidence from a multi-disciplinary perspective that closer European integration might be a solution for the higher education sector. The workshop brought together academics with an interest in the macro, the long-term and the fundamental questions about a democratic society, with three academics who are closely involved in research on the Bologna process and EU higher education policy, and three significant public policy actors.
The theme that surfaced – without any pre-coordination – was that of winners and losers in the ‘Europeanising’ process, and that these were issues to tackle before discussing institutional change. Winners and losers on a global scale: Bologna has been a European success story as viewed from overseas. But as regional blocs and China create coordinated systems of higher education as a way to achieve greater competitiveness, the Western variety of capitalism looks set to lose out. Winners and losers in terms of regulation: Bologna’s initial success was to get coordination via soft regulation. But developments in global science, which are increasingly person-to-person, and in the regulatory industry itself, tiring of regulating all risk, call for a shift to a more pragmatic ‘what works?' approach.
Winners and losers in the research community: Bologna’s success in supporting Europe-wide doctoral education has not helped many of the national participants. The recipients of prestigious European Research Council grants, regardless of nationality, are flocking to the known institutions in the UK, France and Germany. Winners and losers among individuals: Bologna’s work on promoting fairer access has not been enough. It has not put across the notion that expansion does not make access fairer without rigorous policies of equalisation. In addition, there are costs in social integration piling up.
Those with a closer focus themselves had diverse views. Legal studies have caught up with the European Commission line that Bologna is ‘joyriding’ on the back of EU law to argue that, in the name of democratic values, there should be a more legally embedded form of cooperation, with perhaps a Bologna Directive. The political science case made is that Bologna’s value, which could be much better exploited, lies in its role as a protector of academic values and a base for negotiation, development and more informed public debate within the existing democratic framework of intensive coordination.
The 2008 European University Association study Financially Sustainable Universities showing different national approaches to cuts, bears that out. Of the public figures involved, Baroness Tessa Blackstone, who was a signatory to the Sorbonne Declaration that set the Bologna process in motion, recalled why and how the declaration tried to advance university reform. Baroness Lola Young, who chaired a recent House of Lords inquiry on EU plans for higher education modernisation, showed a refreshingly independent line towards the EU compared with past UK committees, where suspicion had been the watchword.
Her report looks to the EU for ‘pragmatic help’ for higher education – for example, with regard to mobility grants and loans. Peter van der Hijden, a policy officer in the commission’s directorate general for research, responded to the general debate.
In summary: there is blue-ish skies research evidence, which needs airing on some crucial Bologna questions. There is a public policy interest to generate. A website will host the workshop papers and provide space to extend the debate.
* Anne Corbett is a visiting fellow in the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Sacha Garben is a fellow at LSE. The academic participants in the LSE workshop, aside from Corbett and Garben, were: Avril Keating (Oxford), Roger King (Bath and LSE), Paola Mattei (Oxford), Susan Robertson (Bristol) and Pedro Texeira (Porto). For further information contact: A.Corbett@lse.ac.uk or S.Garben@lse.ac.uk.

Le programme ERASMUS a 25 ans cette année !
Erasmus fête ses 25 ans.
Le programme lancé en 1987 par la Commission européenne est le résultat de plusieurs années d'initiatives communautaires.
Dès 1971, les neuf ministres de l'Education de la Communauté européenne se mettent d'accord sur le principe d'une coopération dans le domaine de l'éducation.
En 2012, l'agence Europe-Education-Formation France lance l'initiative "Génération Erasmus". Elle va ainsi organiser ou participer à de nombreux événements tout au long de l'année.
Découvrez notre web-documentaire Génération Erasmus.
Quelques informations sur le programme
Depuis la création du programme en 1987, plus de 2.2 millions d'Européens, dont près de 380 000 étudiants français, ont bougé dans toute l'Europe!
En 2010-2011:
31 665 étudiants Erasmus au départ de la France: 25 789 en mobilité d'étude et 5876 en mobilité de stage dans une entreprise.
La destination préférée des étudiants: Espagne, Royaume-Uni et Allemagne.

• à la mise en place de cursus intégrés de master et de doctorat de grande qualité, présentant une valeur ajoutée proprement européenne, et exerçant un attrait à la fois dans l'Union européenne et dans le monde. L'objectif est de créer des pôles d'excellence. Un système de bourses d'études, d'enseignement et de recherche vient compléter ce dispositif (action 1)
• au développement de partenariats de grande qualité entre des établissements européens et des établissements situés dans les pays non européens, permettant notamment des transferts de savoir-faire et des mobilités de personnes grâce à un système de bourses dédiées (action 2)
• aux activités de promotion de l'enseignement supérieur européen, visant à accroître l'attrait des pays européens en tant que destination pour les études et espace d'excellence académique à l'échelle mondiale (action 3).

  As the world comes increasingly to grips with growing material inequalites, and as advocates of social, economic and cultural inclusion continue to argue that uneven access to quality lifelong learning provision in Higher Educatioin tends to reproduce uneven development, the conference will examine possibilities for horiziontal collaboration in higher education, based on a South-North, East-West dialogue that allows for permeability, border-crossing, genuine exchange and mutual transformation. Participants will also examine how migration patterns are challenging thinking and lifelong-learning provision in Higher Education; the conference will provide a showcase for current projects and a forum for prospective initiatives in this regard.
In the year dedicated to active ageing, the conference will provoke reflection on issues of access and collaboration in the field of third-age provision in the context of Higher Education.
Conference Themes
Participants are invited to present papers, posters and power-point presentations on how lifelong learning is or can be promoted through one or more of the following key areas:
Border-crossing
Presentations under this theme are expected to highlight interdisciplinarity, collaboration across institutions of higher learning and projects within the community.
Access
Under this heading, participants are expected to reflect on issues of democratic and equitable access to quality lifelong-learning provision and on roablocks to access. Presenters are encouraged to highlight the link between compulsory education and further, continuing and higher education.
Collaboration
This key area sets out to explore the meaning of collaboration in a context marked by vertical inequality. Partcipants are encouraged to share examples of genuine collaboration between institutions located in different geographies and differentiated by material wealth, human resources, prestige and research potential.
Migration
Participants are expected to react to some of the pressing questions regarding migration and higher education : How are institutions of higher learning reacting to the inevitable movement of people who are making Europe their home? What are the challenges to genuine inclusion in this context? How is migration challenging traditional notions of access, pedagogy, evaluation and validation?