EUE-Net
roots and synergy with other projects
In November 1998 University Transylvania Brasov hosted an
International Conference under the main title ”Universities
in their social and economical environment”. 40 lectures and rapports were presented
during the two days of the meeting grouped on 4 workshops. The participants
were representatives of universities, of industrial enterprises, of social
organizations from
Two years before the Brasov Conference, in October 96,
another university town in Romania- Craiova hosted a Conference in the same
thematic frame, entitled “The University/ Industry cooperation - a
double-way relation”.
In October 2000, another Conference, this time dedicated to
Continuing and Open Distance Learning but also involving the connection between
academic and nonacademic institutions was held in
All these meetings were organized under the auspices of
TEMPUS Programme coordinated in
EUI-Net
legacy
Project EUI-Net was the first initiative at European
coverage that launched debates on the topic generic and explicitely entitled
“University-Industry cooperation”. It should be mentioned that the term
“Industry” was defined within the network scope as encompassing a wide range of
non-academic partners, from large enterprises and SME’s to associations,
chambers of commerce and other NGO’s relevant for the topic.
Project EUI-Net included a number of 83 partners and has a
goal to identify the main challenges of the topic. For this purpose, the main
tools of the Network have been created and set in motion (Annual EUI-Net
conferences, Newsletters, establishment of the legal status of the EUI-Net
Network etc).
One strategic decision of EUI-Net is related to the
principle of its mission according to which the Network approach is “to identify
natural cooperation mechanisms between Universities and Enterprises
based on existing best practice” and establish these
best practices as benchmark for quality. As a result, in the second part of the
project a series of debates has been launched in order to establish the Network
priorities. Following these debates, in the last EUI-Net project year a
comprehensive agenda has been launched for the period 2007-2010. The agenda
included three main Action Lines (AL1…AL3) that have been initiated already in
the last 6 months of the project:
AL1: Quality of Student Placements. The last EUI-Net
conference held in Rome between 14-16 May 2007 already included this issue on the presentation programme.
An important number of contributions have been presented and the discussions
that took place have been so intense and extensive such as one of the workshop
conclusions was that this topic should be the subject for a further EUE-Net conference
and thus it has been included in the Network Agenda for 2007-2010. As a result
the First EUE-Net Conference held in
AL2: Career Development Offices: This action line is the
continuation of the EUI-Net SIG5: Professional insertion – that was recognized
as a key issue for the cooperation between University - Industry and as main
indicator for employability. As a result of the work carried out in EUI-Net it has
been identified that the Professional Insertion is already addressed by a
specialized type of body in
CDO’s have been recognized as the natural mechanisms
mediating the professional insertion in
The goal established for the period 2007-2010 was to develop
a European Network of CDO’s called CDO-Net and establish a strategy for sharing
information and exchanges between the members.
AL3: Entrepreneurship mobility – was the third topic adopted
in the last phase of EUI-Net as a priority for the future. During EUI-Net two
experimental entrepreneurship visits took place and the preliminary conclusion
was that these type of exchanges should continue in
order to explore further the benefits of this type of mechanism. At the same
time, it has been suggested that follow up student placements at the visiting
entrepreneurs would be a second type of Entrepreneurial mobility to be
experimented during EUE-Net.
Synergy with related projects
EUI-Net and EUE-Net inspired many actions at various levels
in several countries and at European level. The most noticeable impact is the
foundation of the University – Business Forum established in 2008 after
numerous consultations, among which the EUE-Net coordinator meet Mrs Belen
Bernardo de Quiros in late 2007 to discuss the opportunity of this type of
instrument. Since 2008 a regular communication has been established between
EUE-Net and the EC Forum.
EUI-Net has had a large scale impact, influencing the
definition of LLL instruments, as within the LLP 2007-2013. While within
Socrates Programme EUI-Net has been the first project involving massively
non-academic partners, in the framework of LLP a dedicated category of projects
has been established and as a result numerous projects have been launched to
study and promote more in details the challenges of U-E cooperation.
Q-PlaNet
In this context, a project that originated directly from
EUE-Net was “Q-PlaNet – Quality Placements
Network”. Q-Planet capitalized the results obtained in the first year of
EUE-Net and built a strategy to go one level up – i.e towards the creation of a
Quality
Standard for Student Placements in Europe and elaborate a set of Guidelines
for the Standard Implementation at European level.
Q-PlaNet standard has been tested and validated within the
project and is currently available for use at European level. One of EUE-Net
priorities for the Agenda 2010-2013 is the generalization of the use of
Q-PlaNet standard as a reference for Quality of Student Placements in
Q-PlaNet was very effective complementary project to EUE-Net
that helped develop the topic and make available at European level a
ready-to-use product that is going to be promoted and exploited in the next
period using the entire EUE-Net Network. The activities of AL1 within EUE-Net
have been closed in EUE-Net after Q-Planet launch such as no activity
overlapping was possible. Moreover, a sound financial management of the EC
funds has been possible by synchronizing two of the Q-PlaNet meetings with
EUE-Net General Assembley (GA) – in
CareerEU
In 2009, E|UE-Net partner P10 (EAEC) launched a project on
AL 2 related to the Career Development Offices funded under LLP. Together with
the activities entitled “CareerCon” that continue under EUE-Net, it is
anticipated that this project will succeed to create an important momentum at
European level such as to boost the University – Enterpise cooperation on this
path. Thus it is expected that CreerEU Conference to take place in