EU and Australia - More than meets the eye.
While not exactly comparable to Optimus Prime, his personal motto is one to which the EU can readily aspire - "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" Certainly "freedom" is the catch phrase for the European Union. Free movement of goods, persons, services and capital are the four fundamental pillars of the internal market. To this has now been added a fifth freedom ... the freedom of knowledge.
Freedom of knowledge encompasses not just the knowledge itself but the freedom to move around to gain and share that knowledge. It is not enough to know something, you have to be able to build on that knowledge to expand it so that it becomes a journey of discovery itself.
The EU and Australia have been engaged at a political level since 1962 when Sir Edwin McCarthy became the first Australian Ambassador to the European Communities. Since then the relationship has, like Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin, "just growed". The latest development is a Partnership Framework which was adopted in October 2008 and which sets the scene for greater collaboration at all levels, including Education.
Europe and Australia have been cooperating on education ever since 1788 when British settlement saw a steady stream of Europeans coming to Australia to start new lives. At this point however, the flow was pretty much one way and so it has remained. Currently there are far more Europeans who come to Australia to study and undertake research than the other way around. It was partly to address this imbalance, and to raise the awareness of students and institutions of the advantages of undertaking part of their studies overseas, that the EC and Australia decided to start a series of bilateral study projects.
The first project started in 2002 and was the result of a call for proposals for a group of Australian Universities to get together with a group of European universities to write a joint module within a Masters Program and to provide funding and the opportunity for 36 students from each side to travel to the respective institutions for a semester. The call for proposal resulted in approx. 20 applications and the successful project, led in Australia by the University of Western Sydney, focussed on Agriculture, Food Systems and the Environment. The project was such a success that the EC and Australia, through the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) are currently working on the 6th round. The projects have changed slightly over the years. They are now targeted at undergraduates, not Masters, students and they now include Vocational Education and Training institutions. More information on these projects can be found at www.deewr.gov.au
The reason for switching from Masters programs to Undergraduate programs was because of the uptake by Australians in the European Erasmus Mundus Program. Erasmus Mundus was started in 2004 and it was set up to promote the excellence of European Education to the world and to encourage students to come to the smaller EU member states instead of just looking at the "big" ones! Erasmus Mundus works in two main ways. Firstly it funds joint EU Masters Programs that are run by a consortium of European Institutions, three of which must be in three different Member States. Secondly, the Program provides scholarships to students from outside Europe to study these Masters programs as well as to academics to teach within these Masters programs. The program is open to just about every country in the world and Australia has been very successful in gaining scholarships and in becoming partners with the European Consortia to be part of the Masters Program. In the last call, 25 students and 25 academics were successful in gaining scholarships to study in Europe from 2009. The first Erasmus Mundus Program which ran up to 2008 is now finished and the new program will start in 2009 and run until 2013. EM II will also include doctoral studies so there is the opportunity for students to do a European Masters and a European Doctorate.. all generously funded by the European Commission!
More information on this is available on http://ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/mundus/programme/back_en.html
There are other opportunities for study and research in Europe including the Jean Monnet Fellowships which cover a wide variety of grants for researchers and academics from study modules to full blown chairs for Professors.. You can find more information on these from http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-programme/doc88_en.htm
The EU-Australia relationship in education is enhanced in other ways. There are now three EU Centres of Excellence in Australia. The ANU Centre for European Studies (NEC) at the Australian National University in Canberra; the Monash Europe and EU (MEEUC) Centre which is based at Monash University in Melbourne; and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). These institutions are co-funded by the European Union and their home institutions and their role is to develop EU focussed university activities, provide information about the EU to various sectors of society, undertake research work and studies on the EU and promote outreach activities such as cultural events, conferences, workshops, lectures, summer schools etc.
In 2008, the EC and Australia signed a "Declaration of Intent" to increase cooperation in the field of education and to this end, we are holding the first of several "policy dialogues" which will focus on matters of mutual interest such as "University reform"; Early Childhood Education" and "Qualifications Frameworks". These "dialogues" will not be ivory tower events but will involve the experts and practitioners (including students!) and will have some positive results in terms of more collaboration at the institutional level.
The EU is serious about education and even more serious about making sure everyone knows about it!! There are more than four thousand higher education institutions in Europe, from top-level research establishments to small, teaching-focused colleges. Europe itself is no less diverse, extending from the Arctic Circle to the coast of Africa, where tiny principalities sit side-by-side with many of the world's leading economies. So how do you know where to go and what to choose. to answer these questions, the European Commission has created a website entitled "Study in Europe". There is up to date information on 32 European Countries, their universities and what it takes to study.. and live in them!!!
