Session V

First of all I would like to thank the organisers and the Europaeum. It is my first contact with this organisation but think that it offers a great possibility to bring the universities in Europe closer together and have a common future for European universities. I would like to thank DaimlerChrysler for the sponsorship. We will have a meeting in spring 2003 to discuss more possibilities of public/private partnerships with industries like DaimlerChrysler or other companies. Finally, I thank the students for their participation.

I have some more general remarks. I think there were a lot of observations and questions about what is good and what is not so good, and some suggestions. My contribution is this: we should ask questions in a more active way, not passively examine the future. The future is not something to observe but to create. Of course it is dynamic and unpredictable and the approach has to reflect this, but we can set the goals we want to reach in the long term. If we know our goal then the question is how to reach it.

The two overarching themes of the conference were that:

• Universities must be pro-active and practical;
• Simple marketization is not the answer;

Education is more than just vocational teaching; European universities have a structural inbuilt advantage over the American system because of our inbuilt cultural diversity; and we have no choice but to take part in the e-learning revolution. But we must co-operate, share, and must not re-invent the wheel.