EDU-LAB project meeting held on September 14th and 15th in Maribor.
Times have changed and so has the education system. Learning is no longer linked to a specific location. Young people can educate themselves in all possible places since they have all the information they need on their smart phones. These are just some of the issues emphasized during a two-day meeting of the European project, EDU-LAB, that took place on the 14th and 15th of September in Maribor, Slovenia.
More than 20 organizations from over ten European countries of the Danube region met in Maribor to try to answer a key question posed by Wolfgang Schuster, Chairman of the European Foundation for Education and a former mayor of Stuttgart, in his opening words: “What can we do to diminish youth unemployment in their own regions, in their own cities?” The answer is, Schuster continued, to connect higher education and business because today it is necessary to link academic studies and job experience.
The situation on the labour market has also changed in recent decades and employers are not so much looking for knowledge of content but for problem-solving skills that can be put into practice at work. Ágnes Sebestyén, director of the EDU-LAB project at the European Foundation for Education, said that the main goal was to create opportunities for young people through connecting education and employment.
The EDU-LAB project is designed to bring together partners from the higher education sector, business organizations, national public authorities and policy-makers to create a sustainable model of cooperative education.
The project meeting lasted for two days. Daška Domljan of Znanje na djelu brought along stekeholders from the Croatian education and business sectors: Ivana Čuljak of Technology Park Zagreb, Dragica Karajić of the Ministry of Economy, Entrepreneurship and Crafts and Vlatko Cvrtila of VERN university. Maribor University, one of the EDU-LAB partners, hosted the meeting.
EDU-LAB: Project co-funded by European Union funds (ERDF, IPA).
