KU Leuven: Una Europa launches joint Bachelor in European Studies
The Bachelor in European Studies offers insights into the fundamental aspects and values of the EU as well as European states and societies, explains BAES programme director Kolja Raube (KU Leuven). “BAES is multidisciplinary and multilingual at its core. We’ll teach students to understand and analyse Europe and its role in the world. And, through the extensive mobility programme, they will also get to experience Europe by studying at different partner universities of Una Europa.”
Students will start the BAES programme at one of the following degree-awarding universities: KU Leuven, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, or Jagiellonian University in Kraków. They will also choose a second – and possibly even third – degree-awarding university or one of the following mobility partners: Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Helsinki, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, or the University of Edinburg. In practice, BAES students will spend at least three semesters away from their ‘start university’.
After completing the joint multidisciplinary curriculum, students can select a major and a minor out of the following specialisations: law and criminology; politics and international relations; communication, education, gender, and sociology; business and economics; philosophy; history; languages and culture. Each university offers different modules, so students choose their universities based on the specialisations of their choice.
The three-year programme will also encourage students to take up an internship. Furthermore, at the end of the programme, they will master a second European language other than English – yet another significant advantage when they enter the European labour market.
Emily Palmer, Secretary-General of Una Europa: “We are very proud of the excellent programme that our dedicated academics have co-developed across countries, languages, institutions, and disciplines. We look forward to start recruiting our first student cohort for the next academic year.”
Joint European bachelor’s degrees are still few and far between. With this Joint Bachelor in European Studies, Una Europa aims to help make the European Higher Education Area a reality and contribute to the European Commission’s objective of achieving the European Education Area by 2025.
The European Commission has recently published its European Strategy for Universities to set out a new transformative vision for European higher education cooperation of the future. Peter Lievens, Vice Rector for International Policy at KU Leuven and Project Coordinator of the Una Europa flagship Erasmus+ project 1Europe: “The European Strategy for Universities sets out a vision for a joint European Degree to be delivered at the national level, which would attest learning outcomes achieved as part of transnational cooperation by mid-2024. At Una Europa, we very much welcome this flagship policy initiative, which is closely aligned with our position on the European Degree as a quality label based on a common set of European criteria. Linked to this policy initiative, we are advocating for a dedicated open and competitive EU funding instrument to be developed to support Higher Education Institutions of all types and sizes across Europe in implementing a joint European Degree.”
The Una Europa Joint Bachelor in European Studies will be presented at the POLITICO EU Studies & Career Fair on 2 and 3 February 2022.