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On April 2nd, the Europe initiative was launched. For those of you who have never heard of it: The initiative wants to anchor clear, long-term goals of Swiss European policy in the constitution (https://europa-initiative.ch/). By doing so, Switzerland can no longer isolate itself, but rather has to actively participate in politics concerning the whole of Europe, for instance European education and research. The initiative will support the current negotiations between the EU and Switzerland and, beyond this, will also ensure that future negotiations will take place.
But how does this initiative affect students? In this initiative, there is a constitutional mandate for Erasmus+, which makes the reassociation to the Erasmus+ network ever more likely. This would open new doors for exchanges and European collaborations, from which students studying in Switzerland have been excluded for the past ten years.
Why are such exchanges important? I probably don’t need to explain this to you, fellow students. But I would nevertheless like to give two examples of European initiatives funded by the EU, which ETH is already part of and from which we profit greatly.
The first initiative is the IDEA League, a collaboration between five technical universities in Europe: Chalmers in Gothenburg, TU Delft, RWTH Aachen, Politecnico di Milano and ETH Zurich. These universities work on solving different problems within Europe concerning technical universities. They also offer summer schools and simplified exchanges between the universities for students. Check these out if you don’t know them already (https://idealeague.org/)! Twice a year, there is also an exchange between the student associations of the universities, called IDEALiStiC. Each university in turn hosts delegations of students from the other universities and work on common problems concerning students studying in Europe. This exchange is also incredibly useful for the VSETH to see how other student associations work and what common problems we are confronted with, for instance housing shortage, sustainability on campus, and mental well-being. We have the pleasure of hosting IDEALiStiC in Zurich mid-April and we are already very much looking forward to the discussions and exchanges!
The second initiative is the ENHANCE Alliance, which ETH joined just recently. Ten technical universities in Europe, including the ETH, are part of the alliance. One of the visions ENHANCE has is to make “One European Campus” through “European Education Pathways”, a subject mapping tool that allows students to select courses across all educational offers of the partner institutions and thus promote a seamless physical and virtual mobility. Cool, right? The Alliance also offers certificate programs, summer schools and other learning programs. Check these out here: https://enhanceuniversity.eu/educational-offer/! Again, there is a Student Forum, where the student associations of the ten universities can exchange and discuss different topics, mainly focussing on exchange and on the European Education Pathways. The next Student Forum will take place in Warsaw in June, to which a delegation of the VSETH is invited!
As you can see, the ETH already has many connections with other European universities from which the ETH and its students profit greatly. These connections are extremely important to stay in contact with Europe and its universities, and to enhance education and research in Europe. The cultural and intellectual exchange is especially significant for students, as these insights can’t be made simply by studying and thus expand the educational offer for students immensely. However, these alliances still don’t replace the exclusion from Erasmus+ and Horizon, as these offer a much deeper integration into European education and research and make exchanges and experiences with many more universities in Europe possible!
For these reasons, let’s keep our fingers crossed for the negotiations between the EU and Switzerland and, in the meantime, check out the Europe initiative!
