EUROPE: EU exports higher education know-how

By Alan Osborn. Keen to raise the profile of the European Union's higher education institutions among neighbouring countries, the European Commission has announced a new round of multilateral partnerships under its Tempus programme for tertiary studies.
The commission has allocated a grant of EUR30.4 million (US$40.2) to support the modernisation of curricula, teaching methods and management of higher education institutions and systems in countries outside the EU, including Russia, Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
The grant will enable "enhanced networking and joint projects and partnerships between higher education institutions in EU and ENPI [European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument] countries", the commission said. About 50 multilateral partnerships are envisaged involving more than 350 institutions from the ENPI countries, furnishing them with "new opportunities to collaborate in a structured way with a similar number of institutions from the EU within the framework of two-to-three-year projects that will commence in 2011," it added. The programme will involve public and private companies and NGOs "to improve relevance and reinforce the links between society and education".
The commission said that thousands of university staff and students would benefit from new career perspectives and university infrastructures would be reinforced and modernised with new investments in classrooms, laboratories, information technologies and teaching material.
The Tempus programme, which has been running since 1990, is now in its fourth phase - 2007-2013 - which is aimed at the modernisation of higher education in 27 countries in the Western Balkans, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. The programme serves to raise the prestige of the EU's own higher education sector while helping to improve relations with countries of strategic interest in the European region. The latest phase of the programme has been allocated an annual budget of around EUR50 million - individual projects may receive funding of between EUR500,000 and EUR1.5 million.