Last week, AEGEE-Europe was invited to join debates taking place in Grenoble, France. The event aimed to gather politicians, young people, citizens and experts on the topic of youth. In this context, I was invited to moderate a panel discussion on the topic of Higher Education in Europe, in which the Minister of Higher Education and Research of France was one of the panelists.
Moderating this debate proved to be extremely interesting and made me think about the place of education in Europe. I believe that AEGEE, as a student organisation, is expected to address this issue and to get involved in order to make sure that the development of a European Higher Education Area answers to the need of young people.
What does Europe have to do with education?
As you might know, education is a national issue. The European Union only has a complementary role in this and can advise the member states, without forcing them to any commitment. The EU budget for education is therefore very low, barely reaching 2% of the EU budget. A few years back however, the first initiative for a common area in Higher Education was implemented, well known under the name ‘the Bologna Process’. This initiative did not aim to harmonise national educational systems but rather to provide tools to connect them. The intention was to allow the diversity of national systems and universities to be maintained while the European Higher Education Area improves transparency between higher education systems and provides tools to facilitate the recognition of degrees and academic qualifications, mobility, and exchanges between institutions. What has been the real impact of the Bologna process on young people? Has it really made their mobility in Europe easier?
Apart from that, currently, education is one of the elements most discussed: while the Lisbon Strategy placed knowledge and innovation at the base of our society, there is still a lot to do in order to ensure a stable, innovative and dynamic European area, and in that context, the education of young people is one of the key elements which will influence it. However, there is currently a youth unemployment rate of 25% in Europe, and this situation has given rise to a lack of participation of young people in the society in general, visible in the low participation during elections.
Besides common challenges in European countries, there are also similar objectives in the field of education, for example increasing the number of young graduates, creating a more attractive knowledge centre, and solving the issue of discrepancy of universities with the labour market.
In this context, why not try to find common strategies to face those challenges?
Europe’s answer to education
The European Union is currently focusing on some specific aspects in the field of education, with the objective to create an attractive European area in the field of education and research.
On one hand, mobility is of course the field where the European Union is most active. We are the ‘generation Erasmus’, and many of us had the chance to study abroad for a certain period of time. We can say that mobility in the frame of education should be a right for young people. It is still not the case – access to Erasmus and other mobility programmes is very limited and connected to the countries of origin and the social background of participants.
One of the objectives I believe AEGEE should strive for, is the possibility for all young people to be able to study in any European country and university they wish, in order to be able to follow the best programme in the field of their interests. In this frame, it is necessary for Europe to be open and supportive, so that young people can get this chance. Indeed, not only does it help students to choose the best programmes in Europe, but it also provides them with an experience which goes beyond the knowledge they will acquire: studying abroad provides the opportunity to discover another culture, to learn a new language, to develop intercultural skills etc. Above all, studying in another European country considerably enhances our feeling of belonging to the European community, it brings Europe closer to us, and results in young people being more interested in Europe. AEGEE striving for European integration means to push for the European Commission to provide financial support and to make sure that mobility programmes for youth are accessible to everybody. Currently, the grants that are provided for a young person differ from one country to another, and in some countries, they even differ from one region to another. Young people do not have the same opportunities all over Europe, and the fact that parts of the grants are typically transferred only after their experience abroad also considerably limits the participation of students from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background.
Another element that was addressed during the panel discussion was the necessity to increase collaboration between universities, research centres and the business world. Universities are often criticized for providing young people with a diploma, but not with the competences that they need to join the labour market or to be an active citizen. For now, one of the greatest challenges of universities is the relevance of education and knowledge that they provide to young people, and whether it is adapted to the needs that young people have when entering the job market. Even if we must grasp education as a lifelong learning process, in the current context, the role of universities in preparing young people for the job market has to be scrutinised. Employers themselves stress that they prefer someone with more skills and fewer diploma to someone with two masters but who turns out to have no idea about the working environment or team work. In AEGEE, we always stress the unique role of non formal education and what being active in a youth organisation provides young people with, especially in the context of preparation in terms of skills, but also to understand one’s role in the society.
We should expect the education system to be a bit less rigid, and to introduce new methods, new forms of learning, which would provide young people not only with technical knowledge (of course needed), but also with civic competencies.
The European Union is currently pushing for more interactions among universities and the business world, which we find interesting, however, we need to make sure that the European specificity of education as a public service stays protected, not to transform it according to the US model, where the business world controls education systems.
But education should also prepare citizens, not just workers
Education and being a student is also about learning to become a citizen. Institutions seem to forget this sometimes, and see education only as tool for employment. However, we, in AEGEE, have the chance to be part of a youth organisation which enables us to experience democratic processes, to develop and raise our awareness about how the society works, the environment in which we live. AEGEE values learning to learn, and the need of young people to grow as citizens and to actively take part in their society. This is why I believe we should also encourage this process of participation to take place inside the universities themselves. If we want young people to become citizens aware of the opportunities they have to make their opinions heard, they need to be able to experience it within the universities already. Likewise and coming back to mobility, we can say that giving young people the chance to be mobile in Europe, will increase their awareness of the society in which they live, and will prepare better the citizens of tomorrow.
AEGEE’s role in this context is to represent the needs of young students in terms of education, to stress our wish to be able to study, work and live anywhere in Europe and to demand education to be addressed in a holistic perspective, giving young people not only skills for their future, but also citizenship education. Those are the values AEGEE strives for, and to reach this ideal, we need to make our students’ voices heard.