European University-Business Forum (28-29 February 2008)
The European Commission’s Directorate for Education and Culture last week organised its first European University-Business Forum in Brussels.
EUA President, Professor Georg Winckler was invited to present in the opening plenary session of the forum. He underlined to the audience that university-business collaboration was a high priority for EUA, particularly in the context of developing relevant policies within a strong lifelong learning framework. He outlined how the organisation was promoting collaboration through such initiatives as the Responsible Partnering and DOC-CAREERS projects.
Looking to the future, Professor Winckler highlighted the need to strengthen the knowledge triangle – teaching, research and innovation – as part of the drive for excellence. Universities were ‘on the move’, he said, but needed collective recognition as key stakeholders in the decision making process affecting Europe’s knowledge economy.
EUA’s senior programme manager, Lidia Borrell-Damian, also presented the university perspective in a workshop on mobility. Outlining some of the outcomes of the EUA DOC-CAREERS project, she explained how this work had highlighted the importance of mobility (both within academia and between business and academia) to business employers.
EUA understands that the Directorate for Education and Culture plans to make this an annual meeting, which will be complemented by a series of thematic workshops on specific aspects of university-business collaboration such as lifelong learning.
Please click here to read Professor Winckler’s slides, or to view the presentation by Lidia Borell.
Published on: Thursday, 6 March 2008 13:19