Mobilising the brain power of Europe

By Howard Davies

Date: 21/04/05

When European Commission President José Manuel Barroso came to the European University Association (EUA) convention in Glasgow earlier this month, he assured universities that they had "never featured so high on the Commission's agenda".

The first Commission president ever to attend an EUA event, his audience consisted mainly of university rectors and convenors of national rectors' conferences, but also students, government officials, and observers from other parts of the world.

Barroso made it clear that without the support of the higher education sector, the faltering Lisbon Agenda could not regain momentum. Education, research and innovation, he said, were crucial to sustained growth and employment.

The Commission's proposals for the 7th Framework Programme (FP) for Research foresee a doubling of the budget compared to the 6th FP and come with a promise of more user-friendly procedures. Universities warm to this message. In exchange for increased autonomy, which entails reduced dependence on the public purse, they look to the Commission to put in place greater possibility of recovering costs than existed in FP6.

Universities also welcome the creation of a proposed European Research Council and its new money for basic research. They cannot survive - financially or intellectually - on short-term contract income. But they are wary of concentrating resources on Europe's handful of world-class institutions. One delegate asked: "How can these produce the 700,000 new researchers sought by the Lisbon Agenda?"

Barroso and Education Commissioner Ján Figel reviewed recent initiatives in the field of education: the Erasmus Mundus Programme seeking to rival Fulbright; the set of mobility instruments bundled into Europass; the recommendation on quality assurance; the new integrated action plan on lifelong learning, set to succeed Socrates in 2007.

Connected with all of these is the Bologna Process - the agreement to converge Europe's higher education systems. In some countries, the move to cycles of bachelor and master qualifications, backed up by credit transfer and quality assurance mechanisms, will require significant expenditure. The cycles imply a shift to student-centred learning, investment in information technology and learning resources, improvement of staff-student ratios, upgrading of administrative infrastructures and re-negotiation of academics' contracts. Public funding systems already under pressure will come under greater strain.

But a stock-taking report, known as Trends IV, on progress towards the Bologna objectives, which was launched in Glasgow by the authors Sybille Reichert and Christian Tauch, suggests that few countries have committed more money to implementation.

The EUA will present a formal declaration to the Bologna signatory governments who meet in Bergen, Norway, in May. It will assert that, whatever the mix of revenue streams, universities remain a public responsibility. Barroso gave this position his full endorsement.

That said, all parties stress the need to diversify funding sources and, in particular, to supplement the public with the private. One straw in the wind is the idea that the corporate sector might be offered fiscal incentives to invest in universities.

Floated by the Luxembourg presidency before the Spring summit, but omitted from its conclusions, it came up in Figel's speech and will doubtless feature in his promised communication on 'mobilising the brain power of Europe'.

The next phase of the Bologna Process will bring it closer to EU policy issues. Universities will want to know how its actions and its cross-border dimension mesh with EU legislation. What will be the relevance of the upcoming debate on services of general economic interest? Does the Altmark state aid case have implications for higher education? Will the UK continue to extol the virtues of public private partnerships? These questions hover on the horizon.

• Howard Davies is head of European Development for London Metropolitan University.

The author, who is head of European Development for London Metropolitan University, takes a look at the new European Commission's activities and plans in the field of education.

European Commission: DG Education and Culture: Education http://ec.europa.eu/comm/education/index_en.html

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