Project Introduction
The UNIQUE project got accepted by the European funding programme Erasmus Mundus in the year 2013 with a total duration of 30 months. UNIQUE focuses on promoting European initiatives to partner universities outside Europe, with the main aim of providing common grounds for academic co-operation.
The international set-up of the project consortium (see) will provide examples of how successful exchange of quality assurance procedures look like and will work on the promotion of mutual understanding of diverse higher education systems.
Further, the project works on the comparability of different higher education systems and also aims to foster international exchange among students and staff to find international recognition by the target groups.
Regional UNIQUE centres will be installed to support the QA departments and international offices of non-EU partner universities and of universities in the respective regions to improve visibility of the European Higher Education Area and the European quality assurance procedures in the target countries.
The Main Aims of the Project
The main aims within the UNIQUE project are the following:
- Promoting the idea of international collaboration and exchange
- Promoting quality in higher education in the beneficiary countries’ in order to be directly comparable with European standards and support the university management in its introduction or adaptation
- Defining, collecting and analysing key performance indicators (KPI) which are comparable to those from European universities
- Counselling the home university concerning recognition of European courses, grades and admission of incoming European students
- Counselling international offices and outgoing students in selecting high quality European institutions for their studies
- Screen the European higher education area for new developments
UNIQUE final Meeting New Delhi/India
The project started in October, 2013 and culminated with final meeting held at BIMTECH on 7th & 8th September, 2016. Eighteen representatives from all partners participated in the meeting and shared the initiatives taken to implement the objectives of the project in their respective universities/institutes.
As part of the project, 5 UNIQUE Centres have been established in China, India, Mexico, Namibia and Russia.
On 8th September 2016, BIMTECH and EPSI organized a panel discussion on “Ecosystem for Internationalization of Higher Education”. The panelists comprised of university representatives that participated in the project, Mr. Sanjeev Roy and Dr. H. Chaturvedi. The European Union was represented by Mr. Sanjeev Roy, Senior Higher Education Expert, EU Public Diplomacy and Outreach in India and in SAARC and Brian Toll, Senior Policy Adviser, International Cooperation in Education and Youth, European Commission, Brussels. The event was very informative and revealing and graced by the presence of deans, directors and eminent professors of several universities and institutes.