Academic Mobility as a Mechanism ofEuropean Higher Education Area Creation

G.G. Parikhina, N.R. Toivonen

Northern European Open University PetrSU,
Petrozavodsk, Russia

The scientific and pedagogical world community celebrated the eighth centenary of the SorbonneUniversity in May, 1998. Beside the anniversary of the university, May of the year 1998 went down in history because the four leading European countries ratified the Sorbonne Declaration (May 25, 1998) in which the urgency of the establishing of the European Higher Education Area was made public for the first time and, in particular, the necessity of the support for more active mobility of citizens as the factor of the common socio-economical development was expressed.

In compliance with the Bologna Declaration, which was ratified in June 19, 1999 in the city of Bologna (Italy) by 29 representatives of the EU countries, the integration processes in the sphere of higher education become more concrete and have defined the vector of the changes in the national systems of education, which satisfy the globalization process. Russia became the full member of the Bologna process countries in September 2003. Nowadays 34 countries are members of the Bologna process.

The establishing of the European Higher Education Area is based on the implication of six states of the organization of the educational systems: the two-tier educational system (bachelor/master), the credit transfer system, improving of the quality of education, the guarantee of job placement for the graduates and of academical mobility and the distribution of Diploma supplement.

The term «academical mobility» means the organization of education,teaching and making researches outside of the student’s, scientist’s or employee’s of the academical personnel native country. This period of time must be equal to the limited duration, at the same time it is provided that a student or employee comes back to his native country after the end of the defined period.

Organization of the academical mobility means the development of the appropriate standard-law basis, theallotment of necessary bankroll, which guarantees to both:

students – access to the acquiring of education and practical preparation as well as the concomitant services in any EU country

lecturers, researchers, and administrative staff – the recognition and reckoning of the periods of time which were spent for teaching, researches, probation period in other institutions of higher education of EU in the record of service and the reservation of a workplace without violation of their rights according to the law.

On the whole, the development of the academic mobility and the attracting of foreign students for the education in an institution of higher education imply the solving of a great number of problems; the following are the most fundamental:

reaching the covenants between different countries and educational institutions relating to validation of qualifications and enclosures to a diploma, the grade system of knowledge and the systems of man-hour calculation and evaluation of quality of education, etc.

elaboration of the regulations and recommendations for the solving of the problems with granting certifications of graduating from the certain institution of higher education in case of studying in several universities;

reconsideration of the regulations of the job placement of foreign lecturers and instructors in Russia and of Russian ones abroad;

diversification of the financial sources of the support for mobility and flexible policy concerning price formation;

organization of effective advertising campaigns in different kinds of print and the Internet periodicals with the information on an university as well as carrying out of the active marketing;

simplification of the procedures of getting the permission to intersect the frontiers and register the documents for the short term residence (visas and registration);

arrangement of conditions for student self-actualization, comfortable places of dwelling and pastime during the education;

learning of foreign languages (especially the European ones) for students and academic personnel;

elaboration and reading of courses in English.

Evidently, the organization of mobility demands the joint efforts of all countries and higher education institutions, which participate in this collaboration in the realization of the six states indicated above.

Programs of mobility can be classified according to the source of their financing, in particular:

mobility within the context of bilateral agreements and contacts – the so-called «non-currency exchange»;

individual mobility within the bounds of activities of commercial international and foreign organizations;

mobility within the bounds of network programs which are financed by international and foreign state programs of the academic mobility;

mobility within the bounds of international and foreign educational scientific and technical and innovation programs and projects;

mobility within the bounds of commercial/business projects.

The students, the lecturers and the instructors of PetrozavodskStateUniversity (PetreSU) take an active part in the academical mobility programs financed by the foreign state organization, in particular:

CIMO – The Centre for International Mobility (Finland);

SI – SwedishInstitute (Sweden);

IREX – International Research and Exchanges Board (USA);

DAAD – Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (Germany);

NorwegianResearchCouncil (Norway) etc.

Let us give some examples.

In the current academic year 8 students of PetrSU have participated in the intercollegiate student-lecturer exchange programs between PetrSU and the universities of Finland (Helsinki, Joensuu, Tampere, Oulu). There are representatives of the Faculty of Baltic and Finnish Philology and Culture, the Faculty of Mathematics, the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, and the Faculty of Law. Within the bounds of the network program FIRST – the Finnish-Russian Student Exchange Programme – 5 students have studied different subjects in Finlandduring one semester according to the programs, which were drawn up by themselves from the whole list of educational courses suggested by the Finnish institutions of higher education. There are representatives of the Faculty of Environmental Protection and Biology, the Faculty of History, the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences.

In FinnmarkCollege (Alta, Norway) 8 students have been studying according to the bachelor and magistracy programs in the sphere of tourism and information technologies.

Academic mobility within the bounds of the network programs is implemented by the Nordic Council of Ministers. The examples of the projects carried out by PetrSU are the projects in the field of tourism (the PetrSU’s contact person is Assoc. Prof. E.N. Pavlova), the project in the field of transfer of technologies (the PetrSU’s contact person is N.R. Toivonen).

There are many programs run on the commercial basis in which the participation is financially settled by students and citizens themselves.

In particular, 15 students of PetrSU have been participated in the individual student mobility programs «Work and Travel», «CampAmerica» in the USA in the summer of 2005. More than 30 participants left PetrSU for different countries of EU and the USA within the «AU PAIR» program in 2004. These students have got the opportunities both of studying and of working in the country of a studied language, and also of acquiring experience of contacts in the non-Russian cultural and educational milieu.

The mobility of students and representatives of teaching staffis of great importance for the establishing of the European Higher Education Area. The period of studying, lecturing or/and making researches abroad gives the unique opportunity for acquiring of new knowledge in a professional field and raising the cultural level.