Eurostudent V – hela rapporten
Context of the Synopsis: Monitoring the social dimension of higher education in Europe.
Since the first round of the EUROSTUDENT project in 1999, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has been facing an ongoing process of change. In order to further press forward these changes, the Ministers responsible for higher education in the 47 countries of the EHEA have, in recent years, put their utmost efforts into consolidating the EHEA.
In this, they are following the goals of providing quality higher education for all, enhancing graduates’ employability and strengthening mobility as a means for better learning and adopting national measures for widening overall access to quality higher education, as announced in the Bucharest Communiqué (2012). The most recent economic and financial crisis which hit Europe in the last decade has strongly affected students’ lives in Europe. As a consequence, the Ministers view ‘(h)igher education as an important part of the solution to our current difficulties […] to overcome the crisis […] and to secure the highest possible level of public funding for higher education and drawing on other sources, as an investment in our future’ (Bucharest Communiqué, 2012).
By resolving to ‘step[ping] up our [the Ministers’] efforts toward underrepresented groups to develop the social dimension of higher education, reduce inequalities and provide adequate student support services, councelling and guidance, flexible learning paths and alternative access routes, including recognition of prior learning’ (Bucharest Communiqué, 2012), additional emphasis has been placed on the importance the Ministers place on the social dimension in higher education and the goal
that ‘the student body entering and graduating from higher education institutions should reflect the diversity of Europe’s population’.