At the launch, European Commissioner Ján Figel stressed the need for much stronger links between business and education. “Europe has been too weak for too long in bringing the worlds of university academia and business enterprise together, to achieve successful commercial exploitation of academic excellence, he said, adding that Europe's universities have tended to shy away from “getting their hands dirty” by collaborating with business.
“This attitude is totally inappropriate in the 21st century. More intense, structured collaboration between our universities and businesses is vital if we are to face the challenges of globalisation effectively,” Figel told the inaugural meeting of the Forum in Brussels.
The first meeting of the Forum brought together around 250 participants from higher education institutions and associations, from companies and business associations, and from public authorities, to look into four topics:
- Curricular development, and how it can lead to greater employability and an entrepreneurial mindset among graduates;
- Continuing education, and how to explore and improve cooperation between universities and companies in the provision of training/retraining programmes;
- The modernisation of governance structures within universities, with the help of business expertise;
- Development of mobility, including student mobility, but also mobility of researchers and teaching staff, between academia and businesses, and vice versa.
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