Higher Education in Europe: a Conference of EURASHE in Prague

A conference of European Association of Higher Education (EURASHE) took place at the University of Economics in Prague on May21-22. The name of the conference was “Cooperation for Innovative Development of Europe: Higher Education, Enterprises and Regions”.

About a hundred of leading experts in education and innovations from Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Switzerland, Ireland, Lithuania, Portugal, Serbia, Spain, Finland, Great Britain, Hungary, Turkey, France, Slovenia, Slovakia and Kazakhstan participated in the event. D.E., Professor Vladimir Minaev, pro-rector of RosNOU was a Russian representative at the conference.

Lars Nilson of Denmark, president of EURASCHE, said that European universities are expected to play an important role in the process of innovative development of European regions at the times of the current crisis.

John Morgan of Britain, head of the Political Economics and Education Commission of UNESCO and director of the Education Comparative Research Centre, emphasized that universities should play a more prominent role in the process of creating the society of scientific knowledge and implementing the motto “A Lifetime Education”.

Yana Puukka, a representative of the International Cooperation and Development Organization, spoke about the necessity of enlisting the efforts of universities and other higher education institutions for further progress in the development of cities and regions. She also highlighted some inhibitory and non-system processes at higher education institutions, impeding innovations at national, regional and institutional levels.

Zbinek Pitra, head of the Expert Committee of the Czech Manager’s Association expressed a similar view in his report. He also spoke about the role of higher education in supporting innovative development of regions. He pointed out that the way from an idea to a commercial project was complex and higher education institutions should participate in the process of implementing progressive developments more actively.

The conference participants expressed rather interesting and sometimes contradicting opinions concerning the Bolognese process, especially while discussing the topic in workgroups. Underlining growing mobility of students and professors, many experts paid special attention to the fact that the standard of education in many European countries was going down. They also regretted that developing of a credit-module system in different countries proceeded irregularly. The experts criticized current computer knowledge testing systems. They believe such tests are derogating the principles of creative work.

Translated by students of Humanities and Foreign Languages Department
under supervision of
Head of Theory and Practice of Translation Chair
E.P. Trofimova