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young Europeans. These programmes have been teaching them how to look beyond borders of their nation states as something as normal and equal as their home. These programmes have taught people things they would have never learnt in formal education, starting with soft skills on languages finishing. But in 2008 the global crises emerged. High ideals stopped being important and people started to look for short-term outcomes. The more measurable the better, the more obvious assessment of advantages is, the better for the project or programme. But the problem with education is that there is no other more long-term investment. Young people are the future of all societies and in most cases it is extremely hard to look at them and say that within 10 years they would achieve this and that. But on the wave of
All the, independent and focused on different aims and objectives, programmes of the past were merged in one superprogramme, with common goals, similar procedures and joint administration. The European Commission assumed that an objective for non-formal education for young people, scholars investigating stem cells and teachers going with their students for an exchange abroad are the same and that it is worth to put all that different groups under one umbrella. Sounds surprising on the first sight. But the justification stays in-line with everything that happens all around the world. Economical incentives on here and now became more important than longterm investments in youth and education. Young people are now just digits in statistics of how many of them travel abroad, how many get a scholarship, how
more or less than 100 meters of a new highway? Is a training implemented by a youth NGO on intercultural communication worth more or less than a new train? Is a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a disabled child to travel abroad and meet his peers more or less valuable than a new tractor for a farmer? Measurements are good, as statistics taught us, but only as long as outcomes are comparable. Wherever such a reliable comparison is impossible one should abandon the idea of comparing it in absolute numbers. Because how can we collate one euro invested in education or youth with the same euro invested in infrastructure? We have to strive and fight for programmes that will support not only quantitative outcomes but above all qualitative, these programmes should stimulate development of young people
rationalisation and measuring everything the European Commission changed its expectations towards its programmes for education and youth. What could not have been changed within the current programmes, has been changed in the new multiannual financial framework which will be implemented between 2014 and 2020. In November last year the European Commission presented a proposal for the new generation of the programmes. Or maybe it would be more accurate to call it The Programme ever since then.
many trainings, how many researches‌ Values and being an active member of the society stopped being important. We cannot measure it. The European Commission proposed a programme which in principle puts accountability and measurement over perspectives. And what is even worse is the fact that very few people tend to disagree with that strive for numbers, for converting everything and everybody into digits. But if this is the trend, if at any point we, young Europeans, have to be measured, I am asking: is my education worth
to make out of them future leaders. And this is not always that easy to count. Miroslaw comes from Poland and currently studying European Studies in Maastricht in the Netherlands. For the past 5 years He has been working for European Students Forum AEGEE, where last year he joined the European Board of Directors as the Vice-President. His particular interests is on higher education and youth policies in the European Union.
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