ERASMUS CHANGING LIVES OPENING MINDS fOR 25 YEARS

Lucien
Kerger
‘Sometimes it is easier to set up a new university than to change
the structures of a 500-year-old institution’
Home institution:
University of Luxembourg,
Luxembourg
Field of study/job title:
Vice-president (retired)
Year became active in Erasmus:
1998
With a population of just half a million, Luxembourg is naturally outward-looking.
Lucien Kerger was director of the country’s Higher Institute for Teacher
Education from 1998 to 2003, and established over 40 student mobility agreements.
‘It was important for teachers to look beyond the borders of our small
country. Forty-two percent of our school pupils are of another nationality; if
a teacher wants to connect with them they have to have seen other horizons.’
The partnerships gave an insight into other academic programmes and education
systems, intelligence that would prove valuable when the country founded
its own university in 2003. He became dean of the Faculty of Humanities, and in
2008 vice-president for academic affairs. One of the university’s founding rules
was that every student enrolled in a bachelors programme must study abroad.
‘It was felt necessary for those who had been educated only in Luxembourg. On
other hand, it was completely mad; no one thought it would be possible.’ They
achieved a remarkable result: 96 % of students now take part in foreign
exchanges, two-thirds of them Erasmus.
The impacts of Erasmus have been ‘totally positive’, he says. ‘Thanks to international
contacts we’ve been able to avoid errors committed in other universities.
We’ve learnt by opposition how to set up a mobility structure and student
follow-up. Sometimes it is easier to set up a new university than to change the
structures of a 500-year-old institution.’
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