#EuropeHome
Start date: Sep 1, 2014,
End date: Aug 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
Entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial skills are high on the EU agenda and it is widely recognised that investing in entrepreneurship education is one of the highest return investments Europe can and should make. Europe 2020 advocates for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, and recognises the need for well-educated graduates with the right types of knowledge and the right type of skills including transversal skill, e-skills and solid understanding of their chosen field.
Europe needs relevant higher education and education should help students to prepare for life and work, nevertheless employers increasingly report mismatches and difficulties to find highly qualified employees.
#EuropeHome aims to contribute to the above-mentioned priorities and proposes a model of a win-win cooperation and a structured framework which involves three target actors (Universities, Employers and Students). The goal of the #EuropeHome project is to address the challenge of student employability and the need of increasing the relevance of education. #EuropeHome will place a particular focus on :
- Employability and entrepreneurial education to foster entrepreneurial mindsets, as well as address the entrepreneurial skills in line with the Higher Education Modernisation Agenda.
- Employability and mobility via part-time placements at home country and abroad to implement a mechanism for matching graduate skills with the labour markets needs, as well as maximize the impact of studies and student mobility by offering to merge both experiences (academic and professional).
- Employability and internationalisation at home via involving non-mobile students in a part-time placements together with international students (tandems).
- Relevance of education via close collaboration between academia and the world of work thus paving the way towards concrete actions in order to address the identified challenges.
The #EuropeHome project is based on a pilot project carried out by EUF-CE network and introduces significant innovations. Firstly, close University and Business collaboration on the basis of Local Hubs established at each partner University to ensure dynamic cooperation, coordinated interventions in the academic curricual and knowledge exchange. Secondly, the learning material, E-module for students and Guidelines for academic staff aim to foster entrepreneurial attitudes and will showcase a comprehensive model of University-Business cooperation and propose ways how to integrate it in the study process.
#EuropeHome aims to stimulate the development of entrepreneurial skills in all disciplines and promote innovation in higher education through more interactive learning environments and strengthened knowledge-transfer infrastructure. The proposed scheme aims to ensure favourable circumstances for students to earn competences, which are highly valued in the labour market and thus considerably increase the employability of prospective graduates.
The impact of the project will go far beyond the project life-cycle and it will be prolonged through the creation of Local Hubs which will continue intensive university-business cooperation on a local scale. The capacity of EUF-CE network will enable to promote the established collaboration structure among the partners potentially reaching 500 000 students within the 21 partner universities and then placing stronger focus on partner beyond the consortium and the Campus Europae network.
Developing this initiative further with the support from the EU funding of the Erasmus+ program will allow to add new dimensions to the scheme and encourage the partners to undertake a holistic approach on the entrepreneurial education as well as will speed up the practical collaboration between universities and business partners.
The general outcomes of the project will not be field specific and will be usable and adaptable for any field.
The project #Europehome will therefore seek to maintain most of its activities within the framework of the existing network of universities (e-module, entrepreneurial lectures, part-time placements, tandems between exchange and local students), since one of the goals of the network is to provide meaningful and in-depth mobility experiences to its students. The other Intellectual Outputs (learning material and guidelines) will be maintained online alongside the e-module and will be freely available to students and academic staff.
The ultimate vision of the project is to create a structured, favourable and mutually beneficial ecosystem for University-Business cooperation and study models that require students to act across traditional boundaries. #EuropeHome intends not only to have a direct impact on participants, but also trigger changes on the long-term among Universities and companies and reach out a wider impact by addressing relevant stakeholders and policy-makers on the local, regional, national and European levels.