EU gives 1 million Euros for higher education

TIRANA, Feb 23 – A launching ceremony was held in Tirana to introduce the newest call for Tempus projects for 2009. Officials of the European Commission, the Albanian Ministry of Education and Science, academia, international relations officers as well as students were present to discuss about their experiences and the benefits of the Tempus programme.
The Tempus programme, a trans-European mobility scheme for university studies, alongside Erasmus Mundus, also a cooperation and mobility programme for higher education, are instruments of the European Commission that aim at modernizing higher education beyond EU borders, thus aligning standards in this area to those within the Union.
The Tempus budget foreseen for Albania in 2009 is approximately 1 million Euros.
The programme finances two types of actions.
First, it funds joint projects which are multilateral partnerships between higher education institutions in the EU and partner countries. Such projects typically develop, modernize and disseminate new curricula, teaching methods or materials, as well as the management and governance systems of higher education institutions.
Second, structural measures are funded aiming at facilitating reform of higher education institutions and systems in partner countries so as to increase their convergence with EU developments. Through such measures, the EU concretely assists countries in the Western Balkans in raising their standards in their path towards EU membership.
There are currently nine Tempus programme projects running in Albania, seven of which were the result of the 2008 call.
Martine Der顦rom the European Commission presented the new call as well as the Erasmus Mundus Cooperation Window. Emphasizing the importance of Tempus for higher education reform in the country, Thomas von Handel, Acting Head of the EC Delegation to Albania, noted that “All state universities and practically all faculties have participated in Tempus. They have managed to open up the field of studies to the priorities that the higher education system faced as a whole. Teaching methods have changed and the programme has worked enormously on capacity building. New degrees have been developed. The programme has had a great impact on the overall quality of higher education”.
Albania is also an eligible country for the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window for the Western Balkans, which provides another 8.5 million Euros to the region.