Brussels, 13/05/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 8 May, during a conference in Cairo, the European Commission launched the 4th phase of the Tempus programme which supports the modernisation of higher education in the 28 partner countries of the Western Balkans, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. The Cairo conference focused on the issue of quality and the experience of the Tempus programme in this field since its beginnings in 1990. It also served as a platform for dialogue between academics, experts and students from the 27 EU member states and 28 Tempus partner countries.
With Tempus, the European Commission undertakes to create an area of cooperation in the field of higher education between the European Union and its neighbours. Since 1990, Tempus has funded 6,500 projects, involving 2,000 universities from the Western Balkans, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. Between 2000-2006, 788 joint European projects and 1,492 individual mobility grants were funded. In addition, during the same period, Tempus supported 270 structural and complementary measures.
The results of a study commissioned by the European Commission indicate that Tempus has had a considerable impact, particularly by setting in motion the long and difficult shift towards output-oriented rather than input-oriented education. The former revolves around the concept of what a person actually knows (the learning outcome), while the traditional, input-oriented approach concentrated more on how long or where the person acquired that knowledge (the learning inputs).
Most universities in Tempus partner countries have made progress in introducing quality assurance schemes, essential for building trust into the system. Tempus has also helped to create a large number of professional teaching staff highly committed to change and reform. Most of the 2,000 universities participating in Tempus projects have developed internal guidelines for quality assurance, including methods for self-assessment and peer reviews. In some countries, mainly in the Western Balkans, Tempus has helped to establish genuinely independent national quality assurance and accreditation agencies. However, if quality is to be recognised as a strategic issue at university level, its place within the universities should be more visible, and appropriate levels of human and financial resources should be allocated to it, the Commission states in a press release, saying: “In many countries of the EU's eastern and southern neighbourhood there is still an urgent need to develop effective materials and courses for staff development in quality assurance mechanisms”. (O.L.)