June, 2019 Brussels – The Professional Higher Education (PHE) institutions have a sound track record of successful interaction with businesses, which is particularly relevant and impactful at the regional level. On one side, it helps to fight youth unemployment, on the other, it reinvigorates the innovation ecosystems in EU’s cities and regions and boosts economic growth by bringing the results of applied research to the market in the form of new products and services. On the 13th of June EURASHE organised a Workshop which gathered higher education and businesses communities to discuss how to optimise the interaction between PHEIs and businesses (industry and SMEs), in terms of research and innovation activities and learning provisions, including work-based learning and up-skilling, in a way that both parties are mutually taking full advantage of the existing and forthcoming EU funding opportunities.
EURASHE Workshop “Professional Higher Education institutions and businesses: stronger interaction for greater impact in Europe” marks the end of the series of events on the Future of education which took place in the last quarter of this year. Stephane Lauwick, President of EURASHE in his welcome speech shared with participants the findings from the 29th Annual Conference which took the last month in Budapest. The conclusions of the two days Conference suggest that the Professional Higher Education institutions blur the frontiers between education and research, integrate the regional and the fundamental and develop holistic approaches, interacting with a large spectrum of institutions and private stakeholders. By doing so, they become not only more efficient at teaching and fostering innovation, but also allowing the future young professionals to better understand the world around them. This is particularly relevant considering the rapidly-changing labour markets whereby new jobs demanding new skills appear every month.
Businesses seek better conditions for creating more jobs
The introduction was followed by the keynote speeches of representatives from the European Commission and businesses. Mrs Victoria Petrova presented European Commission’s ongoing economic policies in relation to future skills development and employment, she also addressed a need to create suitable legal and economic conditions which would help businesses to generate new job opportunities in Europe. The presentation was followed by the voices of the private sector – Altran and AquaFilSlo which introduced their businesses models, current interactions and future expectations from the professional higher education institutions. Brussels based association Feani provided the views and challenges of the engineering sector.
More openness for better PHEIs and businesses collaboration
As a natural follow up of sectors’ expectations from each other, EURASHE announced its willingness to open its structures-the Committee for a Strategic Advice and Working groups – to businesses and its representatives. From now on all the private sector representatives can apply to attend EURASHE meetings and, therefore, receive the most updated findings in the field of Lifelong learning, Quality assurance, Research and Innovation.
Being a part of the Committee for a Strategic Advice businesses’ representatives will give an opportunity to contribute to the development of EURASHE structures, set and improve organisational priorities and activities.
The event was followed by the annual EURASHE Summer networking cocktail hosted by Erasmusogeschool Brussels.
Please find photos of the Workshop.
Presentation of the European Commission’s representative is here.