[in Public Service Review: European Union, pp. 129-132]

"The Euro-Mediterranean Distance University" (English Version)

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Abstract

The Euro-Mediterranean Distance University

INETTUNO (Network per l’Università Ovunque), in the framework of the EUMEDIS project (EuroMediterranean Information Society) launched by the European Commission to foster the development of the Information Society in the Euro-Mediterranean area, devised the Med Net’U project (Mediterranean Network of Universities) aiming at the creation of a EuroMediterranean Distance University.

The EUMEDIS programme derives from a long thinking process carried on by the countries involved in the project and the European Commission. This process was meant to raise the consciousness on the part of governments and organisations on problems and possible solutions related to the development of the Information Society.

Today museums, cultural centres, internet cafés, campuses, etc. are the new places where the information already disseminated throughout the towns is distributed, locally, but they are also points of access to a globalised knowledge. New technologies create new spaces among people; telecommunications networks allow working together, and the development of new knowledge by means of research, but also new competencies through education.

The problem, then, is not whether education reproduces social disparities; today, the problem shared by all universities in the world is how to better adapt this system and how to create, in the context of a globalised economy, systems that could develop integrated teaching and learning processes, using different languages to communicate knowledge and to create open systems, having no space and time barriers. The entire world is involved in this big change and, as far as education is concerned, there is a widely shared commitment to create new organisational systems for universities at local, national and international level that integrate presence and distance. In this new context, therefore, the Med Net’U project allows the sharing of the Mediterranean countries’ different cultural settings to create new alliances among universities and educational bodies, and develop together new real and virtual spaces to build common networks of knowledge.