Where is Europe’s higher education going?

Socio-economic change of the last years was characterized by globalisation of economy and by the arising information society. Both developments have produced new demands for European Higher Education: more and more knowledge intensive jobs require a fast and flexible adoption of new knowledge, skills and competencies and novel technologies have created new possibilities for learning, knowledge sharing and communication. Last but not least globalisation forces EU member states to co-ordinate their systems of training and education in order to make their economy competitive on the world market.

One of the main motivations for the iCamp project is to reflect on these challenges and to contribute to an inclusive information society in an enlarged Europe as proposed in the strategic framework of i2010 by the European Commission (CEC 2005). It suggests the use of latest ICT to strengthen competencies towards self-direction and self-organisation, collaboration and social networking across national borders, key competences for knowledge workers in 2010 and beyond.

At the European level, a lot of initiatives have been started after the Lisbon summit of European heads of governments in 2000, such as the Bologna Process, Copenhagen Process, as well as the European Qualification Framework (EQF). All these initiatives have the common goal of creating opportunities for setting up cross-national education, and as a consequence, support mobility of students as well as employees all over Europe.