Erasmus Mundus ? Success of the EGEI Programme

21 Jul
2012

EACEA (Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency) published selection results of the 2012 Erasmus Mundus Programme Call for Proposals on July 20, 2012. The Agency has received 177 proposals under Action 1A – Erasmus Mundus Master Courses – out of which 30 were selected for funding. VŠE is the member of consortium led by the University of Antwerp.

The MA Economics of Globalisation and European Integration programme is organized by the Faculty of International Relations. It was the first international programme in which the faculty became involved, originally named EITEI – Master of Arts in Economics of International Trade and European Integration in 1994. It was a joint programme of seven European universities. Since its beginning, Ms. Anna Klosová is the Academic Director. She contributed vastly to its accreditation by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (EITEI was the first accredited international programme of VŠE) and the fruitful partnership of the University of Economics, Prague within the consortium.

In 2002, the programme was selected by the European University Association (EUA) as part of pilot project "Joint Masters in Europe". Based on the decision of the European Commission in September 2005, MA EITEI was selected as a master programme within Erasmus Mundus. Erasmus Mundus is a cooperation and mobility programme in the field of higher education that aims to enhance the quality of European higher education and to promote dialogue and understanding between people and cultures through cooperation with Third-Countries. Starting in the academic year of 2006/2007, students from non European countries participated in the programme for 4 academic years. Upon the programming period, the consortium submitted another application for Erasmus Mundus. Unfortunately, the application was not successful. Despite of this fact, the member universities decided to continue in cooperation and implement "Joint Degree" even without financial support of the EU.

In 2010, the consortium expanded with two new non European member universities. Currently, VŠE partners are: Universiteit Antwerpen (Belgium), Universit? degli Studi di Bari ‘Aldo Moro’ (Italy), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), Universidad de Cantabria (Spain), Université de Lille 1 (France), Staffordshire University (United Kingdom), Xiamen University (People´s Republic of China) and Universidade de Brasília (Brasil).

The studies consist of four trimesters. In academic year 2012/2013, these four take place as follows:

  • First trimester (September – December): Xiamen University, China (XU),
  • Second trimester (January – March): Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium (UA),
  • Third trimester (April – June): Faculty of International Relations, University of Economics (VŠE),
  • Fourth trimester (July – October) – students process diploma thesis at their home university.

For more information, visit: egei.vse.cz/english.