Despite a long history, cooperation activities between businesses and universities in the field of education have a relatively low profile.  However, there are signs that there is now an increasing recognition of the value to be gained from such collaborations.
Whilst there is no single driver for university-business cooperation, businesses, universities and students all value the benefits to the student experience and its contribution to the employability of students.
There are many ways in which cooperation activities take place. Most cooperation activities involve more than one form of cooperation and may also change over time as activities mature, evolve, or reach the end of their lifespan. 
Through this study , numerous benefits of university-business cooperation in the field of education have been identified.  These effects range from the tangible to the intangible, the direct to the indirect, and the quantitative to the qualitative.
The benefits of collaboration can be broadly described as falling into four categories, namely:

• Those that are aimed at strengthening levels of human capital, with labour supply and employment implications;
• Those that relate to stimulating entrepreneurship through teaching and learning;
• Those that relate to knowledge exchange, aimed at promoting or stimulating product/process innovation or new pedagogy;
• Those that relate to raising the profile of an organization.

The report shows that established methodologies for measuring, or assessing, the outcomes and impact of business-university cooperation in the field of education are quite limited.
This report presents two, linked, approaches that can be used to assess university-business cooperation in the field of education: a scorecard and an assessment framework that can be used for project planning and the assessment of investment proposals. Both can be used for assessing the progress of projects, from different perspectives, and both can be used for assessing the success of cooperation projects. Read more...

Dutch++ is a project co-funded in the framework of Key Activity 2 Languages of the Lifelong Learning Programme.
In this project, four institutions work together on an online learning platform which invites learners and speakers of Dutch to extend their knowledge of "real Dutch" in interaction across the linguistic area: the Netherlands, Flanders and Surinam.
The four partner institutions are the Dutch Department of the University of Vienna (coordinator), the Language Center of the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, the Teacher Education of the Thomas More University College in Belgium and the Dutch Department of the FU Berlin. In the first project year, the Teacher Training Institute (IOL) in Paramaribo, Surinam, was also a partner in the project. Read more...

INCLUDE and LILAMA, co-financed by the EU’s Lifelong Learning Programme (Key activity 2 Languages, Multilateral Networks) can be considered as sister or companion networks. Together they provide synergy and added value for policy-makers and programmers interested in improving language policies for Multilingualism, under the Business and Social Inclusion perspectives.
The two networks were created with the aim of improving the design of language policies in Europe from two different and complementary perspectives: employability and regional competitiveness, on the one hand, and social inclusion, on the other.
INCLUDE
The INCLUDE Network, created in 2013, operates in the field of language policy and practice for the active social inclusion of groups at risk of exclusion. INCLUDE offers its members a number of facilities for keeping up to date with developments in the field, for planning new initiatives, raising awareness and incorporating language learning for inclusion of groups at risk in local, regional, or national policies. In 2014 INCLUDE will be open to new members. Organizations, institutions, language teachers, interpreters, policy-makers, policy consultants, migrants communities, and any other group or individuals interested in the theme of language learning for social inclusion are invited to join the Network.
LILAMA
LILAMA is a mutual learning platform for the exchange and dissemination of best practices contributing to the design and implementation of language policies oriented to labor market needs. Read more...