Iniversities Networks and Academic Cooperation

Abstract

The field of education, and especially that of higher education, is related directly to market needs as well as to social and political processes. In Europe, nowadays, this field is found itself in a prediod of transition with respect to both, its organizational structure and the establishment of its objectives. Such a transitional period is not independent that occurs in an environment of national diversities. Under these circumstances there are two fundamental principles upon which a modern university is based. The first includes the formation of a more flexible framework that allows development according to international social and economic conditions and the continiously expanding globalization the latter being a highly controversial concept that has been interpreted in various contradicting ways. The second, includes the perspective of establishing a common framework with the terms and conditions that influence formation and development of higher education as a whole. In other words a modern university takes two attributes into account: flexibility -which sounds a more or less straight forward concept; and cooperation in the sense analyzed below.