A3-0163/93
Resolution on the Commission Memorandum on Higher Education in the European Community
The European Parliament,
-having regard to its resolution of 13 March 1984 on higher education and the development of cooperation between higher education establishments,
-having regard to its resolution of 25 January 1991 on the European dimension at university level, with particular reference to teacher and student mobility,
-having regard to its resolution of 15 May 1992 on education and training policy in the run-up to 1993,
-having regard to Rule 121 of its Rules of Procedures,
-having regard to the Commission communication to the Council "Education and Training in the European Community: Guidelines for the Medium Term 1989-92" (COM(89)0236),
-having regard to the Commission Memorandum on Higher Education in the European Community (COM(91)0349),
-having regard to the Conclusions of the Conference "Higher Education and 1992: Planning for the Year 2000" held at the University of Siena in November 1990,
-having regard to the report of the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education and the Media (A3-0163/93),
A.whereas the Commission memorandum considers the provision of higher education in the European Community in the medium to long term - over at least the next two decades - and identifies various requirements of and challenges to higher education in the European Community, including changes in the labour market, demand for highly trained manpower, changes in the school population because of demographic trends, the need for continuous education, the role of higher education with regard to research, general education, diversification of vocational training,
B.whereas the Memorandum is intended as a discussion document for the Member States, particularly for higher education establishments and for all interested parties and interest groups concerned with the future of higher education,
C.whereas the Memorandum takes as its premises the multiple functions of higher education (research, harmonious development of the personality, social development, vocational training) but bases its proposals for new options in higher education too much on the expectations of industry and too little on the rights and needs of young people and adult students,
D.whereas Parliament does not know the results of the discussions in the Member States and a systematic overview of them would render policy more transparent and assist the adoption of a suitable position,
E.whereas the principal objectives of higher education are to impart and add to basic knowledge and skills and to help create a peaceful, humane, just, democratic and ecologically responsible society,
F.whereas one of the main objectives of higher education policy must be both to encourage all young people to pursue post statutory age education to the maximum of their individual potential and to provide the necessary courses and placements for them to do so, as well enhancing the educational and training opportunities for older people to improve their existing skills and qualifications, so that they can adjust to changing requirements in employment and in society,
G.whereas today's rapidity of change in the requirements for new knowledge and skills means that it is no longer enough for society to rely on these demands being met by new young entrants to the workforce,
H.whereas in developing those aspects of higher education appropriate to Community level action, the EC Institutions will gain valuable impetus from the Maastricht Treaty, as the changes proposed to the existing EC Treaty include, for the first time, specific articles on education and culture,
I.whereas participation in higher education must be increased by encouraging and enabling all those groups in European society that are currently under- represented to achieve improved access to higher education, both for reasons of social equality and to meet the growing need for greater levels of education and skill. Notes particularly that women are still much under- represented in senior positions in higher education institutions,
J.whereas in the post 1992 Community, with an increasingly mobile workforce, increased student mobility will be vital in order to provide more qualified people who have experience of studying, living and working in other Member States, in the rest of Europe and on other continents,
K.whereas increasing student mobility thanks to the effectiveness of Community level programmes such as ERASMUS and COMETT, the proportion of higher education students spending part of their course studying in an institution in a country other than their own has risen in seven years from only 0.5% to nearly 5% and these exchanges are regarded by the students themselves and by the higher education institutions who participate as of great professional and cultural value both to the individual students and to society as a whole,
L.whereas Community financing of exchange programmes is a necessary stimulus to exchanges and the organization of the programmes cannot be left to the initiative and financing of the Member States and institutions,
M.whereas higher education institutions can fulfil a valuable role as skill and knowledge resource centres, helping to stimulate social, economic and cultural development in less advantaged regions and parts of the Community,
N.whereas the Community could draw much more on the expertise which many of its higher education institutions possess about external countries, through the world-wide contacts they have developed and use this expertise both to learn and contribute in its relations with them,
O.whereas higher education institutions have an important role to play in fostering the understanding and preservation of the wide diversity of European languages and culture, as well as in preparing their students to meet the needs of a more integrated Europe,
P.whereas the partnership between higher education and industry must be based on an equal and open relationship and higher education institutions remain ultimately responsible for the content and structure of their courses,
Q.whereas it is necessary to stimulate the development of research in all higher education institutions and encourage collaboration between their research function, the requirements of industry and requirements arising out of social changes, provided that the crucial role of pure research in higher education is not endangered,
R.whereas providing wider opportunities for Continuing Education can play a vital part in assisting access to higher education for all, as well as exercising an equalising role between both classes and generations and in encouraging the ethos of education as continuing throughout life and not something which ceases at an arbitrary age; whereas it will therefore be necessary to integrate continuing education provision more closely with the mainstream of higher education and to give it greater significance, including proper recognition for the teaching staff involved,
S.whereas Open and Distance Education has grown and developed throughout the Community, albeit in varied forms, during the past 25 years and plays a key role in creating opportunities for pursuing higher education, through the flexibility it offers to mature entrants, to those without initial formal educational qualifications and to individuals with demanding work or personal commitments; whereas it can also enhance the quality, range and flexibility of institution based higher education,
T.whereas EC higher education institutions will need to explore ways of better equipping their teaching staff with a European dimension and a greater awareness of the diversity of Community higher education provision,
U.whereas true mobility of people cannot be achieved, despite the removal of most frontier controls, unless we can establish common qualifications as far as practicable, or adopt a fully satisfactory system for the mutual comparability and acceptance of existing national higher educational qualifications. Nevertheless total harmonisation of professional and academic qualifications between the traditional systems of the member states is not only unachievable, but undesirable, as a degree of diversity in course structures and teaching methods is actually beneficial. Welcomes therefore the development of a system of mutual comparability based on greater understanding between the higher education institutions themselves, assisted by the activities of the Commission's National Academic Recognition Information Centres (NARICS) and by inter-university co-operation set up under the ERASMUS Programme, and the establishment within ERASMUS of a system of transferable credit units known as ECTS (European Community Cours
e Credit Transfer System) - currently operating successfully on a pilot basis,
V.whereas it is most desirable that a comprehensive networking system be established for the Community on developments in higher education, to assist in future Community policy making decisions,
W.whereas the Memorandum has successfully stimulated reflection and discussion about the future of higher education on the part of the Member States and higher education institutions, and the realisation of most of the ideas contained in the Memorandum will be a matter for the Member States and their higher education institutions and that this accords fully with the principle of subsidiarity,
X.whereas there is a need for a report summarizing the results of the discussions in the Member States and institutions,
Y.whereas the Commission has now received the necessary feedback from all Member States and plans to make its first report to the Education Council later this year,
1.Endorses the aims of the Memorandum, which it considers provides a contribution to the debate on the future of higher education in the Community; hopes, however, that the dialogue involving the Commission, the Member States, and the institutions and organizations concerned will be continued on a permanent basis with the aim of promoting cooperation among higher education institutions and enabling information on the development of higher education in the Member States to be disseminated to more useful effect by and to the relevant parties;
2.Calls on the Commission to pursue the following principal objectives in its European higher education policy: to add to, impart and in so far as possible disseminate knowledge and skills, provide instruction in using this knowledge and the ability to understand the rapid changes and crises, problems and opportunities of modern society, the ability to learn personal responsibility, develop the ability of self-expression and creativity and promote social cohesion in society and cultural exchange;
3.Believes that the basic concepts, aims and recommendations of the Memorandum and the results of the debate on it should be taken as premises for research into expectations with regard to the future of higher education in the European Community;
4.Calls on the Commission and Council to support expansion of existing and planned exchange programmes, until the goal of involving at least 10% of students is reached; calls on the Commission after full consultation, to make proposals to help overcome the practical difficulties, such as language problems and differing admission requirements, which currently restrict student mobility; the Commission should also devise special incentives aimed at creating an even balance between numbers of participants from the Member States of the Community;
5.Calls on the Commission and Council, in the programmes and recommendations on higher education, to take account not only of the requirements of industry and vocational training in the strict sense, but to allow sufficient scope for social and cultural education in accordance with the expectations of students and institutions;
6.Believes that the considerable interest in and debate occasioned by the Memorandum demonstrate the need for more consultation, on a continuous basis, among higher-education policy-makers in the Member States;
7.Calls on Member States to move towards greater flexibility in their financial assistance to students, with the aim of ensuring that students who have been awarded a study grant in their own country can, if they wish, use it to take up a course at any higher education institution which is prepared to accept them in another Member State. This is an exciting objective, already desired by many young people entering higher education and is a goal which the Commission shoul help bring to fruition. In the longer term study grants must be progressively harmonised in real terms, so that all EC students are treated equally;
8.Calls on the Commission, in collaboration with national education authorities, to conduct a study into the reasons why in all Member States, young people from unskilled or semiskilled working class families, with disabilities or special educational needs, or from certain ethnic minority groups, form a significantly smaller proportion of those in higher education than they do in the population as a whole. Regrets that the Commission insufficiently stresses the importance of opening up higher education more fully to these disadvantaged groups and insists that the results of the study be used to design measures to help achieve this;
9.Calls on Member State governments to accept that the opening up of higher education will require increased financial support. Whilst recognising this will not be easy during the current recession, stresses that failure to resource sufficiently the expansion of higher education will in the longer term imperil both economic and social cohesion and the overall strength and competitiveness of the whole Community;
10.Calls on the Commission to help improve the level and quality of research in higher education institutions by closer integration between EC-sponsored research programmes and its educational and training programmes such as COMETT, ERASMUS and DELTA. Trusts also that Member State governments will parallel this by action at national level to improve co-operation between what is being done locally, nationally and by the Community;
11.Stresses that higher education - industry partnerships include mutual respect for the respective goals and functions of industry and education and insists that such partnerships must not preclude a continuing commitment to basic research, to scholarship and research for its own sake, or its role in enhancing the quality of teaching and to research in areas of social, cultural and human concerns. Higher education institutions must not become over-dependent on income derived from such partnerships. They must be guaranteed that degree of public funding for both teaching and research which will underpin their academic independence and democratic administration. Considers moreover that the Commission might usefully establish a code of practice for such partnerships;
12.Calls on the Commission to exploit the potential for higher education institutions, by acting as skill and knowledge resource centres, to contribute towards Community development programmes aimed at helping less advantaged areas of the Community and to encourage the institutions themselves to assist, by becoming more outwardly orientated and interacting both with their local regions and on a national and international scale, particularly with those countries in the EEA and other applicant or potentially applicant States;
13.Calls on the Commission to help in stimulating the development of open and distance education by encouraging closer collaboration between the various national institutions and by ensuring that qualifications obtained in this way are guaranteed the same status and are as widely recognised as those obtained by institutional study. Sees no case, however, for the establishment of a single centralised European Open University;
14.Urges all higher education institutions increasingly to develop research and courses related to the needs of the Community itself, such as environmental issues, science and technology and peace and security policies; to offer courses more flexible in length, choice between full and part time study and for retraining in new skills, in order to meet the needs of a wider student body, including mature entrants and those from minority or disadvantaged groups; also to provide education and training of a broader and more generic character, based on the acquisition of hybrid skills, so reversing the trend towards ever-increasing specialisation which has marked the past few decades;
15.Calls on the Commission to stress the need to improve the level of language skills within higher education institutions and the key role of the Community's own LINGUA programme in achieving this, as well as the need to expand teaching staff exchanges between Member States and increase the recruitment of overseas staff, whilst recognising such developments will require considerable administrative restructuring in many institutions;
16.Calls on the Commission to continue to develop a system of mutual recognition of professional qualifications, based on trust in the quality of the examination system in each country, and with respect to academic qualifications, to continue to work towards methods of comparability based on greater understanding between the higher education institutions, assisted by the activities of its National Academic Recognition Information Centres and by the adoption of a system of transferable credit units;
17.Calls on the Commission to grant students' organizations a say in all stages of education policy;
18.Supports the Commission's plans to promote the European dimension in education, by initiating a new programme, with a major exchange element, to provide better support both for teacher training and for in-service training within all higher education institutions. Supports also the creation of an EC-wide information network on higher education, linking the activities of the NARICS and existing information exchange under the EURYDICE Programme, to provide an improved source of information for the Community itself on developments in this area, so assisting future Community policy making;
19.Repeats its call for the Commission to propose at the earliest opportunity an action programme for intercultural education, in which higher education institutions should have a role to play;
20.Calls on the Commission, having taken into account the views of the Parliament, higher education institutions and all relevant bodies within the Member States, to prepare within the next year an Action Programme aimed at achieving those goals for the future development of higher education in the Community for which there is general support. This programme must clearly define the Commission's own role in this area and recognise the need for the involvement of applicant countries to the EC and all countries of the EEA;
21.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council and the governments of the Member States and of member states of the EEA.
