“The signing of the Manifesto “Empower European Universities” puts us on the spot. What can we do to enhance the contribution of European Universities to society? The signatories to the Manifesto agreed “to produce a basic guideline to assess the performance of EU member states to empower European universities by June 2011. A first progress report is scheduled to be prepared by June 2012, to be followed by successive progress reports. These documents shall be produced by an NGO (Empower European Universities – EEU) for which the signatories act as founding members in collaboration with independent correspondents in each of the 27 EU countries.”
The NGO has been established on Dec. 14, 2010 as a Foundation for Dutch law with Jo Ritzen (chair and founder), Tessa Blackstone (secretary) and Magyar Balint (treasurer).
Our first search will be for correspondents in the 27 EU countries for which we ask the help of the other signatories. We intend to look for correspondents in national centers of higher education research like CHEPS (The Netherlands) or CHE (Germany), or the Higher Education Policy Institute (UK). We hope to complete this process by April 1, 2011. Simultaneously a basic guideline to assess the performance of higher education will be developed in a close connection between the signatories, the board and the correspondents.
The Manifesto has received wide attention. Many individuals have indicated their wish to join the thrust of the Manifesto. This is done by creating an Empowerment Forum for all those interested in commenting on drafts of publications.
In other words the structure of the EEU is as follows:
- The Board initiates and coordinates
- Correspondents for each EU country: assess their country’s progress in Higher Education
- Signatories/partners are closely involved in conceiving publications
- Empowerment Forum is for discussion on draft publications.
Empower European Universities is based at UNU-MERIT, Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, where both the Chair and Project leader hold appointments.
