Workshop 1: EU as an institution – Anita Lîce, Michael Hörig, Victor Vidilles

This workshop is a training on the European Union. You will learn how the EU is built up and what competences it has to influence higher education. It will range from recognition of degrees law to mobility programmes to the Open Method of Coordination in the Lisbon Strategy. An analysis will be given on the communication papers sent out from the commission on brainpower and the role of universities and it’s effect on the Non-EU countries will be discussed. This will be more a training than a workshop, although the outcome would be both a better understanding of EU, but maybe even a way of approaching them more professionally than we have done before.

Workshop 2: Financing of Higher Education – Erik Evans, Maher Tekaya

This workshop will examine the latest policy in the field of financing within the Lisbon Strategy implementation. The country reports for Lisbon on 2006 will be used here and will be checked with reality. Also there is a new interesting in vouchers-type financing. What is this financing model and what does it mean for students? The ever-interesting topic of tuition fees will be tackled from the institutional perspective. In what way are tuition fees spent inside the university: do they give us better education? Also, the question needs to be answered why governments and institutions rather invest in top research programmes and nice buildings instead of student grants.

Workshop 3: Mobility Programmes - the young ones - Christine Scholz, Elena Gorschkow, Sime Visic

Mobility is the issue that covers more than only EU unions and is therefore useful for all of the ESIB members. Especially since the TEMPUS programme, which covers countries outside EU, is now under discussion. Also the issue of brain drain will be tackled here under the aim of attracting top researchers to the European Union. The workshop will focus on recent developments in the mobility programmes of the EU: which regions have a focus? What is this ‘lifelong learning programme’ really abouit? The CEEPUS project will explained as an example of good practice.

Workshop 4: Influencing the Lisbon process – Angelika Striedinger, Marja-Liisa Alop, Nina Gustafsson Åberg

The past years made it more and more obvious that the Lisbon Strategy has a direct impact on the role and provision of higher education. While the direction for educational reforms is drawn on the European level and translated into concrete measures and benchmarks, the national education ministries are in charge of implementing the Strategy in their education systems.

In this process, the involvement of students is less than sufficient, both on the European level as well as in the national policy making.

Apart from this lack of possibilities to influence the development of higher education, the main focus of critique attacks the core of the Lisbon Strategy: It looks at education through the glasses of economic competitiveness and argues the need for changes from a one-dimensional economic approach, ignoring the multiple roles of education in society.

For us this raises a central question on how to tackle the process: Should we put the focus on trying to increase students’ involvement on a micro-level, meaning that we try to influence parts of the process, such as for example policies on lifelong learning or financing models and their implementation – even if we only have the chance to achieve minor changes? Or should we rather focus on the process as a whole – through campaigns that attack the core idea of Lisbon for education? And is there a chance at all to push the huge Lisbon-ship into a different direction?

The basic question of the workshop is: How do we raise the students’ voice in the Lisbon Strategy – both as ESIB and as NUSs: Dialogue, campaign or fight? This also includes looking at approaches and claims of other stakeholders and searching for possible cooperation with school students, universities, teachers and rectors, with trade unions and industry.

This workshop will not only discuss those questions but also include a training for student representatives for developing political strategies, strategic cooperation and networks.

Workshop 5: Quality Assurance markets – Jon Ivar, Thompson Eikeland, Janja Komljenovic, Colin Tück.

Quality is at the heart of the Lisbon Strategy and at the work of the European Union concerning education. The first priority for the strategy was to make European higher education a world reference of quality. Therefore, the Commission is a very active promoter of European cooperation in quality assurance.

This workshop will discuss the future developments of quality assurance in Europe. It will start with a recap from the Bologna Process: what is Europe pushing for? It will then continue with discussing the European Standards Procedures and Guidelines proposed there and the latest decision of the European Parliament concerning quality assurance. These documents will be linked to the developments in some countries, such as Slovenia where no quality assurance system will be set up, but the market will decide what is good and bad. What can be the impacts of market-type quality assurance? What can student unions do about quality assurance and this European influence?