European Campus

Somewhat late and amid European turmoil, five universities on the Upper Rhine have signed a paper founding a European Campus.

The universities are Basel, Freiburg, Strasbourg, Haute-Alsace (Mulhouse and Colmar), and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

The motto: Think European, bundle the forces.

Basel

While Greek Prime Minister Tsipras is again asking for new European money to keep over-indebted Greece in the Eurozone, the deal with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to keep refugees out of Central Europe is tilting back. British Prime Minister Cameron is sluggishly fighting the United Kingdom's Brexit from the European Union; the presidents of five universities, despite the ongoing crisis, plan an unbureaucratic European network without borders among their respective colleges.

Freiburg

Strasbourg

Students from three countries will quickly switch between various locations on the European Campus using a Trinational Regio Ticket for trains and buses. What is most important to Professor Hans-Jochen Schiewer, Rector of the Albertina-Ludovica, is that the result of a bi- or tri-national academic curriculum will be the European doctorate. The European Campus, promoting a common research infrastructure, will become a magnet for the best young scholars and scientists, provided, as Red Baron likes to add, that they speak French and German. 

The projected potential of 15,000 scholars and scientists, 11,000 doctoral students, and 115,000 students, with a total budget of 2.3 billion euros, depends on how many of them speak English as a lingua franca.

Haute-Alsace

KIT Karlsruhe

For some participating universities and institutes, the European Campus is just an experiment; for others, it is a centennial project. Rector Schiewer again: We shall give ourselves ten years. If it does not work, we shall stop it.

This fall, the first summer schools are scheduled to take place at Freiburg University. Red Baron will participate in a well-established one, organized by the Frankreich-Institut, at the beginning of September, with this year's topic: De Tintin au Congo à Charlie Hebdo; Bandes dessinées et caricatures de langue française.

All photos are ©Der Sonntag, Freiburg

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