Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-05-19-Speech-3-421"
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"en.20100519.23.3-421"2
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"Madam President, I would like to thank the various rapporteurs for their excellent cooperation. As shadow rapporteur on this matter for the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, I am very pleased with the report. We have managed to agree on a report containing recommendations for improving cooperation between universities and business – a report that, above all, contains very specific initiatives for modernising universities. Europe’s universities, as we all know, limp behind the world’s elite, a fact which also has major consequences for Europe’s competitiveness. It is therefore not surprising that education, research and innovation have been given high priority in both the Commission’s work programme and the Europe 2020 strategy. Of course, I hope that the majority will be in favour of following this upgrading of the priority status of this policy with an increase in funding, too. We are currently in a situation where we need to think outside the conventional framework of our education systems and we can start by breaking down the walls between universities and the area that benefits from the universities’ output, namely business.
We are focusing on two things, in particular, and I will say a few words about these. Firstly, I would like to mention the modernisation of the curriculum. It is important for there to be greater focus on interdisciplinarity and development of the skills that are actually demanded by the business world. University courses must reflect, to a greater extent, the requirements of the labour market and they must be set up with that in mind, for example, in the form of more business-relevant curricula, which, in turn, the business community should actively help to keep up-to-date. The second thing I would like to mention is mobility. It is important to reduce the gap between universities and business and for there to be people who bridge this gap. Work placements are a good example of how university students can gain practical experience and then subsequently bring that experience into their studies. At the same time, these students are better prepared to enter the labour market after their courses. Practical placements should definitely be supported and promoted in Europe.
Research can also build bridges between universities and business. I have talked before about a personal hobbyhorse of mine, namely the Danish business PhD scheme, whereby an employee in an undertaking in Denmark can gain a PhD at a Danish university with the help of a public grant. In fact, I held an evening of debate in Brussels on 3 February 2010 in Parliament with broad participation from both the business world and universities, and the view that evening was pretty clear: an EU business PhD scheme would be a most useful tool for promoting specialised business-relevant research, as well as competitiveness, in European business, thereby creating more jobs and economic growth. It thus received absolutely unequivocal support from both parties. Moreover, it is a most effective method of bringing business experience and practical knowledge into universities and thereby making the teaching more focused on skills and knowledge that are relevant to the demands of the labour market. The scheme could be integrated into the existing Marie Curie programme, possibly within the Industrial Academic Partnership programme, and would help to strengthen the pursuit of the goals of the Bologna process. I am pleased that, tomorrow, we will be able to adopt a report that contains a recommendation to establish just such a scheme."@en1
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