students

Spain announces a “national Erasmus” to “foster territorial cohesion”

December 20, 2016 06:48 PM | ACN

The Spanish Minister for Health, Social Services and Equality, Dolors Montserrat, proposed this Tuesday during her appearance before the Commission of Health of the Spanish Parliament the creation of “Erasmus scholarships at a national level”. The programme will be named Cervantes, in commemoration of the fourth centenary of the death of the writer, and seeks to “promote territorial cohesion in addition to favouring the mobility of students”, Montserrat explained. It is a mobility project for students between 14 and 18 years old so that they can study the last two years of high school and the two pre-university years “in another Spanish city different from their own”. To be launched together with the Ministry for Education, the project “aims to promote knowledge of our cultural diversity, our traditions and languages”, said the Ministry in a statement.

‘Saloufest’ promoters cancel the event due to political “pressure”

October 5, 2016 07:32 PM | ACN

I Love Tour, the company behind the five-day event for students from the United Kingdom ‘Saloufest’ has decided to cancel the festival. After 16 years celebrating this festival in the town of Salou, on Catalonia's Costa Daurada, the organisers have considered that the Catalan Government and the Salou’s Town Hall “pressure” make it “nearly impossible to offer programmes for youth tourism in the region”. As an alternative, the promotors offer to the 10,000 students which were due to attend ‘Saloufest’ to go to ‘Sportsvest’ instead, an event to be organised in Lloret de Mar, on the Costa Brava. ‘Saloufest’ combines sports with leisure activities but in recent years many neighbours and entities in the area have complained about several out-of-control parties, which saw loud singing and drunken behaviour on the streets of the town. 

Two Catalan students design low cost wheelchair for developing countries

May 5, 2016 01:19 PM | Fay Hemelrijk

The students at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya have designed and built a low cost wheelchair for people in developing countries. The chair is made from bicycle wheels, a supermarket trolley and PVC pipes and can be made in fifteen minutes. The cost is approximately 70 euros, half the conventional cost. The two students made the wheelchair as an NGO in project and they also made a video of how to make it. The NGO is going to spread the tutorial to people in developing countries who need a wheelchair and are not able to afford one.

Australia's RMIT University opens its European campus in Barcelona

June 7, 2013 01:41 AM | CNA / Gaspar Pericay Coll

The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, which is one of Australia’s main universities, will offer Master and PhD programmes in Barcelona. The RMIT University, which has three campuses in Melbourne and two in Vietnam, is now coming to Europe and will coordinate its activities in the continent from Barcelona. The Australian education institution will also cooperate with several Catalan universities, in particular the UPC, the UPF and ELISAVA. The Catalan Minister for Economy and Knowledge, Andreu Mas-Colell, attended the opening ceremony. He underlined that Australia’s higher education system is “the most internationalised in the world”. He also stated that the RMIT campus in Barcelona “is a bridge towards Europe, the Mediterranean Area and Latin America”.

Nine US and four Catalan universities aim to promote international masters programmes together

April 9, 2013 05:03 PM | CNA / Clara Roig

The Consortium for Advanced Studies of Barcelona (CASB), made up of 9 of the most important universities from the United States and 4 Catalan public universities from Barcelona, is considering implementing international masters degree programmes and summer courses together. 300 American students have already come to Catalonia to study through the CASB. According to the American universities, the Catalan language is not an obstacle but an added value to the cultural and social experience of studying in Barcelona.