• Lifelong Learning Policy
• General Policy Framework for Education and Training
• Mobility and lifelong learning instruments
• School education
• Higher Education
• Vocational Education and Training
• Adult Learning
• Innovation and Creativity
• Research and Analysis
• Lifelong Learning Programme
• Lifelong learning programme overview
• Erasmus for higher education
• Leonardo da Vinci for vocational training
• Comenius for school education
• Grundtvig for adult education
• Transversal Programme
• Jean Monnet for European Integration
• External Programmes and Policies
• Tempus
• Erasmus Mundus
• Co-operation with industrialised countries
• External co-operation in education and training
• More Information
• Reports and studies
• Education and training in the Member States
• Former programmes
• Dissemination and Exploitation of Results
• Lifelong learning programme
• Who we are
• Our Commissioner
• Our Structure
• Our mission

EU and USA boost their co-operation in education

Policy Dialogue

The first EU-US Education policy forum took place in Washington D.C. on 8 & 9 October 2009. The forum was organised by the European Commission, Directorate General for Education and Culture and by the U.S. Department of Education. It was co-chaired by Ms Martha Kanter, US Under Secretary of Education and by Ms Odile Quintin, European Commission Director-General for Education and Culture.

The purpose of the policy forum was to strengthen education co-operation across the Atlantic and exchange ideas on challenges and trends in the areas of higher education reforms – for example the Bologna process for university reform - and university-business co-operation.

"We face common challenges in the EU and in the US especially in terms of modernization of higher education and opening our universities to the word of business. The Policy Forum was very useful to better understand our respective systems and policies and we agreed on a series of concrete joint follow-up actions", stressed Ms Quintin.

Ms Kanter added: "The first EU-US Education Policy Forum provided us an unprecedented opportunity to foster mutual understanding and deepen transatlantic co-operation."

Student exchanges

Both sides agreed that there was still enormous untapped potential for academic co-operation and exchanges of students, faculty and staff between the USA and the EU and that there was scope for further reinforcing the Atlantis programme. They also agreed to engage in a joint EU-US Tuning project, to conduct comparative studies on credit systems and university-business co-operation across the Atlantic and to exchange best practices on entrepreneurship and access to higher education for disadvantaged groups.

Dialogue with universities

Director-General Quintin also met with high ranking officials and senior faculty at Standford and Berkely Universities on the West Coast and Harvard, MIT and Boston University in Boston.

While the discussion covered a wide range of issues, the highlight was the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and how universities collaborate with business and nurture innovation in the two sides of the Atlantic.

In the exchanges it clearly emerged that the key to the success for these top universities was their horizontal, non hierarchical organisation, where the faculty enjoys a great degree of freedom in setting curricula and students have an equally large autonomy in selecting research projects. Another big difference with Europe is the entrepreneurial culture which pervades the entire campus and the student life. The students' mission is not only to obtain a solid academic base of knowledge and skills but also do develop research projects which may eventually result in a business start-up with funding from venture capitalists in the area. It is claimed that a more risk-friendly attitude in the USA makes this kind of approach easier to carry out than in the EU.

In concluding her visit of the USA, Director-General Quintin said: "We have a lot of very good universities in Europe, and with the Bologna process Europe is becoming increasingly attractive to students from other parts of the world. However, there is a lot we can learn from US universities, in particular their entrepreneurial culture, their positive attitude towards risk-taking, the concentration of state-of-the-art research facilities around key universities, and their access to venture capital which allows for the easier translation of knowledge into innovation."

A major conference took place in Boston on 11-13 October, which gathered project directors of the EU-US Atlantis programme and the EU's other bilateral programmes with Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea and New Zealand. The conference saw the participation of some 400 participants from institutions running projects funded by the Commission and the partner countries and was organised by the US Department of Education.

To know more

• EU-US Education Policy Forum: Joint Statement
• European Commission Delegation to the USA: Education
• European Commission: EU-US co-operation in the field of education and training
• The European Institute of Innovation and Technology