OECD/France International Conference: Higher Education to 2030. What
futures for quality access in the era of globalisation?

Paris, 8 December 2008

Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Introduction
I am pleased to take part in this opening session of your conference and I
am happy to be given the opportunity to celebrate the 40th anniversary of CERI.
A lot has happened during this time in Europe and in the world. Western
countries in 1968 have passed through a lot of social and political unrest. My
country then – Czechoslovakia – lived through hopes of the Prague spring
reform process, but later suffered a military invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops.
M. L. King was assassinated in the US… Today Cold War is over; Europe is
free and reunited, the US citizens elected the first ever afro-American to the
supreme office in the country.

After 40 years the CERI enjoys a high reputation among its international
partners. It is also thanks to the wise mix of rigorous analysis and conceptual
innovation championed by CERI that OECD has come to lead research in
education and education policy. As you know, the European Commission has a
long tradition of close cooperation with the OECD, and as I wish CERI happy
anniversary, I look forward to many more years of fruitful exchanges between
our organisations.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
This is a time for looking ahead in higher–education. We are approaching the
end of an important decade and a great deal of reflection is taking place
everywhere on the future direction of our policies.
The EU is preparing the next phase of the Lisbon Strategy.
The Bologna Follow–up Group is discussing the post–2010 agenda.
UNESCO is preparing to renew its global strategy on higher education; and
Today’s conference has “Higher Education 2030” in its title, widening the
horizon not by one, but two decades.

The other reason for looking ahead is the unprecedented financial and
economic crisis we find ourselves in. We naturally turn to universities in search
of the innovative ideas and concepts that will help us overcome the present
turmoil and build more sustainable systems in the future.
This is the context for the ideas and questions I would like to share with you
today. I will focus on three objectives which are among the most urgent areas
of reform for Europe’s higher education. These are:
qualifications for the future;
global attractiveness; and
mobility for all.

Qualifications for the future
We have seen a lot of progress over the past years with regard to the
development of compatible structures and frameworks in European higher
education, and the Bologna Process has been playing a central role in this. I am
thinking of the three cycles, the qualifications frameworks, the European
Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance, the European Quality
Assurance Register in Higher Education (EQAR), ECTS and the Diploma

Supplement.
As you all know, many of these are structural measures. Now it is time to
have a closer look at the content. Are the qualifications we provide good
enough? Are they relevant for the mission of today’s universities?
In addition to its age–old mission of preserving a tradition of scholarship,
expanding the frontiers of knowledge and nurturing critical thinking; I believe
that higher education has two additional functions today:
training people for high–level jobs in the labour market; and
preparing for active citizenship.

Back in March, months before the present crisis became so dramatic, the
European Council invited the Commission “to present a comprehensive
assessment of future skills requirements in Europe up to 2020″. Our response is
a policy document to which we are putting the finishing touches and which will
be presented later this month.
Many students today will end up working in jobs that haven’t even been
imagined yet. Since we cannot predict the exact nature of these future jobs, we
need to develop the concept of an ‘optimal skills mix’. This means that we must
continue to teach specific skills, but graduates will increasingly need a set of
more general skills, such as problem–solving and creativity, language skills,
analytical skills, etc.

Educational institutions are faced with the challenge of learning how to
impart these new skills. I suppose that in Europe we will see the emergence of
sectoral qualifications frameworks, inspired by the Tuning project approach to
learning outcomes and competences and describing both subject–specific and
more general skills such as “learning to learn”.
The OECD, in its new AHELO initiative, is also following this two–fold
approach: looking at students’ performance with regard to both discipline
related and generic skills. The Commission is pleased to cooperate with the
OECD in this very interesting project by providing European expertise on
learning outcomes.

Attractiveness
Ladies and Gentlemen,
There are over 4,000 higher–education institutions in the wider Europe;
but despite this impressive number, our populations are still relatively under
qualified. Not enough of our talented young people enter into universities and
not enough adults have ever seen a university from the inside.
Only 23 per cent of the EU working–age population has achieved tertiary
education compared to 39 per cent in the US. Student enrolment rates are 25 per
cent lower than in the US (57 versus 82 per cent). Also, Europe attracts large
numbers of students from other continents, but we certainly do not use our full
potential as a global player in advanced training.
What can we do to make higher education more attractive for our citizens
and for students and scholars from other continents? How can we make
universities more exciting places to study and work? How can they become
centres for lifelong learning?

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The structural changes we have seen taking place under the Bologna flag
are part of the answer, as they make learning offerings more transparent and
comparable. But universities also need more autonomy to carry out their mission
and manage their resources more efficiently. Research shows that there is a
positive correlation between autonomy, performance and better use of resources.
The Commission has launched a University–Business Forum earlier this
year to provide a platform for the exchange on issues like employability of
graduates, continuing education, professional university management etc. We
also support university–business partnerships through the Erasmus programme.
For international attractiveness, the promotion activities of the EU
(Erasmus Mundus and the study–in–Europe web site) should go hand in hand
with active promotion by universities themselves.

Mobility for all
From the vantage point of the European Commission, the issue of
mobility is inextricably linked to the Erasmus Programme. Erasmus mobility is
certainly a European success story if you look at how we moved from modest
beginnings with 3,244 students in 1987 to the current figure of almost 160,000
students participating every year. We celebrated one million Erasmus students a
few years ago and aim to celebrate three million by 2012.
There is also the non–Erasmus mobility, often for longer periods of study
or entire degree programmes. Erasmus and non–Erasmus combined may help us
reach some 10 per cent of university graduates.

These are impressive figures, but not enough. The realisation is spreading
that learning mobility is neither an end in itself nor primarily a means for self
fulfilment but that the experience of mobility is a vital ingredient of education
and training in times of globalisation. It should neither start only at higher
education level nor be limited to the higher education sector.
At my request, a high–level expert forum has looked into the key
challenges linked to mobility, such as: how can we make mobility the rule for all
young people, rather than the exception? Is it a problem of motivation? Will
better support in the organisation of the stay abroad help? Or more and higher
Erasmus grants? What about student loans?

The Commission is currently discussing the forum’s recommendations
and will publish a Green Paper on mobility next year, to stimulate the debate.
What is clear to us is that, in time, all graduates should have the opportunity
during their studies to undertake a recognised period of study or a work
placement in another country. All degree programmes at bachelor, master and
doctoral level should include a mobility window as an integral and recognised
part of studies.

We also have to think about more generous and more accessible student
support. Any substantial increase of mobility will require a new partnership of
all players, from governments to regions, from businesses to foundations, and
from universities’ leadership to students and professors.

Closing remarks
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As European Commissioner for Education and Culture I have spoken
from a European perspective on qualifications, the attractiveness of our
institutions, and mobility for all. But I think that the challenges of higher
education are similar on a global scale.

Fair access to higher education, funding problems, convergence versus
diversity, quality assurance—these will undoubtedly be the themes you will be
discussing today and tomorrow. We live in time of globalization and
massification of education. I believe that access and quality of education
becomes very important factor of integration. And we know that education
unites. Therefore I look forward to the suggestions this Conference will come up
with; some of which, I am sure, will feed back into our discussions with
Member States and other stakeholders.

Thank you.