Brussels, 25/05/2010 (Agence Europe) - Co-operation between universities and industry should be strengthened. Nonetheless, higher education establishments should be allowed to keep their autonomy and benefit from public aid, emphasised the European Parliament in a resolution adopted on Thursday 20 May by a show of hands. Companies should step up their support for young talented people by providing scholarships and a European Industrial PhD Scheme co-financed by the EU. MEPs also advocate "securing small and medium-sized enterprises access to university education and research both by increasing public funding and by simplifying bureaucracy".
Universities are urged "to undertake innovative, far-reaching and methodical curricular reform” and to follow up young graduates more closely in order to assess the economic and social usefulness of education programmes. A culture of entrepreneurship must be integrated into curricula at all levels of education, beginning with the primary school. The business world is encouraged to participate in designing educational material for this purpose.
Nevertheless, universities should maintain autonomy over their curricula and governance, without any financial or intellectual dependence on business in order to preserve equal financing to all fields of study. MEPs also emphasise that university-business dialogue should be targeted not only at mathematics, science and technology but should cover all fields, including humanities.
The resolution stresses that mobility between universities and business is a key to achieving closer cooperation between the two worlds. MEPs are calling on the Commission to propose a legal framework for this purpose and are encouraging greater mobility for students and university professors. The widespread provision of student work placements should be promoted and be paid or subject to a European system of transferable units that can be utilised in an effort to provide greater benefit to students. Parliament is also highlighting the importance of language learning in the mobility framework, pointing out that “there is no longer any such thing as a 'job for life'" and that there is a need to match lifelong learning opportunities as closely as possible to the needs of individuals, of vulnerable social groups and of the labour market. Bearing in mind the ageing population of Europe, MEPs call on universities to broaden access to their study programmes. Lastly, they suggest further development of experimental, distance, electronic and blended forms of learning. (I.L./transl.fl)