Competitive universities need to internationalize learning: perspectives from three European universities

Resumen

The process of restructuring European universities in order to harmonize their educational systems is rapidly approaching a key milestone as 2010 looms large on the horizon. Our universities must take this opportunity to evolve into highly competitive environments that are unhindered by linguistic constraints and fully capable of transferring knowledge. The objective of this paper is two-fold: on the one hand, it sets out to analyze new forms of education and instruction made available on engineering degrees within a context of ever-greater internationalization; and, on the other hand, it seeks to highlight the benefits arising from joint collaboration between the teams that comprise interuniversity networks. To that end, data taken from surveys conducted in three European universities are used as real case studies. The results demonstrate that the internationalization of knowledge across universities has a positive impact on scientific productivity, improves the quality of education offered by the teaching staff and leads to greater student mobility. This strategy is intrinsically linked to learning from local experiences shared by members of the same university as well as from more global experiences made available through inter-university networks. It implies being willing to listen, to communicate, to engage in dialogue and means that we must seek to understand the potential contributions from the staff and students that make up each university. Keywords: Bologna Process, European Higher Education Area, Competitive Universities