Forward from the National TEMPUS Office Director in Syria
Universities were and still open institutions devoted to the search for the application of universal knowledge, and the international dimension is the spirit of their work. No body can expect to hear the word ‘university’, or any entity within the university without expecting to hear the word international. Most today universities’ mission statements have included words such as society, region, international, global, overseas, worldwide, and more specifically international partnerships with overseas universities, students exchanges, staff exchanges, joint degrees…etc.
There are now more international visits, attachments and exchanges, research collaborations, and cooperation or franchising agreements, and a more active international market in overseas student and staff recruitment. Universities today form linkages with each other in order to be able to compete. The term cooperation became very popular in universities’ leaders speech. Even no one official letter or non-official message between university presidents is delivered without having a statement saying “we are looking for more cooperation with your university in the future”. Whenever, universities’ leaders met they sign a memorandum of understanding, may be just to remind themselves that cooperation is one major term of reference for their work. University leaders recognize that without international cooperation they will be out of the game, and may be the game will be over for them.
TEMPUS Programme became as an important structure for cooperation in higher education. TEMPUS promotes the “people to people” approach: its added value lies in its promotion of international and regional co-operation, which generates better communication and new networks of personal and professional contacts between the academic worlds of the EU and the partner countries. In Syria, since 2002, TEMPUS has played an important role in the higher education in Syria, with most of the higher education institutions participating in the programme. By 2009, there was in total 35 JEPs, JPs, SCMs and SM projects implemented and still on going projects.
No doubt TEMPUS has created the good environment for cooperation between nations. The cooperation that is built on doing, sharing, exchanging, and pluralistic behavior of partners is the cooperation that will survive, while the cooperation that is built on talking, dominating, taking and not giving, and individualistic behavior of partners is the cooperation that will pass away. TEMPUS is built on the positive cooperation, and we always hope it to be like this. The coming TEMPUS philosophy will be built on the naturalistic cooperation between people whoever they are, wherever they are, and whenever they are.
