On 22 and 23 April, EUA participated in the latest meeting of the Directors General of Higher Education organised under the Irish Presidency of the Council of the EU in Dublin. The latest event, which brought together Directors General and heads of national rectors’ conferences, focused on higher education and regional engagement and development.
Following an introductory presentation on the “benefits and barriers” of regional engagement, the first session highlighted three case studies of different types of engagement provided by the European Institute for Innovation and Technology, EIT (Co-location centre model), the Campus Engage project at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and finally an example in Ireland of a consortium of universities and companies coming together to custom-design programmes to meet skills needs in ICT.
This was followed by a discussion and presentations on supporting and evaluating engagement and regional connectivity of HEIs, and the role of the European Structural and Investment funds in supporting higher education. This was an opportunity for EUA to underline the work it is doing in this area and particularly following the recent joint EUA - JRC expert meeting to discuss the role of universities in research and innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation.
This joint (EUA-JRC) initiative was the “first step” in a process of partnership building between universities and regions in implementing the “Smart Specialisation Strategy” and the monitoring of its future success. EUA and EC-JRC in Seville will now take forward the outcomes of this event and will work towards developing a set of guidelines for regional-university cooperation in RIS3 with the objective to inform future policy development and raise the awareness of how best to take advantage of the synergies between the competitive funds through Horizon 2020 and the Structural and Cohesion Funds. More information and presentations from the Directors General event are available here.

By Tuo Yannan. The Chinese government will support about 50,000 international students in China in 2015, and the country will become the largest Asian destination for such students in 2020, high-level Chinese officials said on April 25.
About 320,000 overseas students came to China in 2012, the majority from South Korea and the United States, said Liu Jinghui, secretary-general of the China Scholarship Council.
Last year, the ministry implemented the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) for the education sector, she said. According to the plan, in 2015, the number of international students in China supported by the government's scholarship program will reach 50,000.
While Europe has become the second-largest destination for Chinese students abroad, "only about 35,000 students came from EU member states to study in China last year, so we will promote China's education system in Europe now," Liu said.
Du Yubo, vice-minister of education, said that by 2020, about 500,000 international students will be in China, enabling the country to become the largest Asian destination for international students.
China and the European Union will deepen education and exchange cooperation this year, said European commission and Chinese government officials at the first meeting of the EU-China Higher Education Platform for Cooperation and Exchanges, which was held on Thursday in Brussels. Read more...