Socrates Promoters - Kluesener-net.de

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Co-operation with the National Socrates Agency The Example of Italy Promoting Socrates The establishment of a good level of co-operation between Socrates promoters and Socrates National agencies appeared since the beginning of the project as essential for its success. Italy is one example of good co-operation. Since Italian promoters, as well as the others, mainly concentrated on Erasmus action, the main institution contacted was the Socrates/Erasmus National Agency. From the beginning the staff of the Italian Socrates/Erasmus National Agency showed a great interest in the project and a great confidence in the Socrates promoters. Socrates promoters were immediately invited to take part of events organised by National Agency and to plan a calendar of joint activities. Notwithstanding some initial problems, due to the inexperience of promoters, they were always welcomed and supported by the staff of National Agency, which made the whole year as a continuous training for them. The different role among the National Agency staff and Socrates promoters was immediately well defined and this avoided any incomprehension, that sometimes happened in other countries. The idea of Socrates on the move is not substituting experts of National Agencies but presenting a different channel, more direct, to students . In this way the project worked very well. Proof of this fruitful co-operation in Italy is the launch of a joint project of Italian Socrates/Erasmus National Agency, ESN Italia and AEGEE, whose name is ”Il Testimone”, which in Italian is the thing that runners pass each other in relay races. The main aim of the project is facilitating the information flow among homecoming and outgoing Erasmus students. ”Il Testimone” is a sort of questionnaire that every leaving Erasmus student will receive from his/her International Office before going abroad. This questionnaire contains questions about host higher education institution, courses followed, accommodation, social aspect of staying abroad, etc. At the end of the Erasmus period, this document has to be filled up and given to the local ESN section or AEGEE antenna (according to a planned distribution). New leaving Erasmus student can get it in order to know information about the host higher institution, where they are going to stay, in this way leaving better prepared, which is essential condition to get the best from an experience abroad. The project is launched this year as pilot project in some ESN sections and AEGEE antenna. Next year will be launched widely in order to involve more higher education institutions. 19
Non-EU Countries 20 Problems and obstacles of mobility related to Erasmus in non-EU countries First of all the higher education institutions (HEI) are facing the problem that there are not enough people taking care of the mobility programs. This might be related to the fact that mobility is a relatively new issue (maximum 10 years) in the non-EU countries. The responsible are mostly overloaded with administrating the contracts and do not have time to take care of ERASMUS itself and especially of the communication with students. Apart from that, the lack of the financial resources causes that the HEI is not able to employ more staff. The topic of financing HE is exceeding the topic of this article. It is important to mention though that students DO have the need of a better management of HEIs which is impossible without money input. An additional problem such as the delay of the arrival of ERASMUS money from the EU, makes it impossible for the HEI to run the project. The financial situation of the average Central and Eastern European Country (CEEC) student does not allow him/her to leave their country without being secured by the scholarship. Finally there is also a lack of information from the European community which is due to very complicated procedures of approving the institutional contracts on the EU level. This makes the work of HEI and of course also of National agencies very difficult, since they are not having clear idea about what will be the conditions for mobility. The lack of information causes, that only few students know about the possibilities in the field of mobility offered by HEI and even few know about the selection criteria for ERASMUS. The person who is in charge of the contact on foreign HEI usually sets the criteria and is managing the mobility related to this particular program. The result is low transparency of the election procedures. It is very common that the HEI does not recognize the studies abroad, even though it is one of the basic rules of ERASMUS. The problem is that in these situations the HEI do not know the ECTS very well and so they think that if the system is not exactly the same then it is also not comparable and transferable. One of the crucial problems for our students is the too low ERASMUS grant. However we think it is good to share the costs, since a higher education of good quality (which includes also international experience) is the best investment to ones future career. But we also have in mind one important rule of ERASMUS which is availability to all students regardless of the socialfinancial background. Since it is a fact that the central and eastern European countries’ students’ financial situation level is much lower than the one of average student from an EU country, it is obvious that there are no equal opportunities in this regard in ERASMUS. We are aware that we have to be realistic in solving this problem and that is why we do not demand more money for grants. We think that European community shall encourage EU member states to give students from non EU countries the opportunity to participate in ERAS- MUS by issuing them for time of study a work permit. We know that this is possible, because some countries (Denmark, Finland, Germany...) already started to do so for non-EU students. These countries usually set some limits for work, since the student is not abroad to make money but to study. We hope that problems brought up in this paper will be solved out soon for the sake of a more mobilized and more open minded Europe. Renata Kralikova Socrates Promoter for Slovakia, Eva Suba Socrates Promoter for Hungary
Page 2 and 3: Contents 4 Words of Welcome 6 Proje
Page 4 and 5: Manja Klemencic ESIB Valentina di M
Page 6 and 7: The Organisations behind the Projec
Page 8 and 9: We have aimed at even geographic di
Page 10 and 11: Dora Dimitriou (22) is member of AE
Page 12 and 13: XLLL Extra Life Long Learning Bucha
Page 14 and 15: The show must go on At December 10t
Page 16 and 17: The Netherlands - National week on
Page 20: Press Mirror 21

Socrates Promoters - Kluesener-net.de

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?