The European University Continuing Education Network, stylized eucen, is a multidisciplinary European association for University-based

continued education Continuing education (similar to further education in the United Kingdom and Ireland) is an all-encompassing term within a broad list of post-secondary learning activities and programs. The term is used mainly in the United States and Canada. ...

. It was created in May 1991 and registered in Belgium as a non-governmental,

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

organization.

History

In May 1991 the representatives of 15 European universities met in the

University of Bristol , mottoeng = earningpromotes one's innate power (from Horace, ''Ode 4.4'') , established = 1595 – Merchant Venturers School1876 – University College, Bristol1909 – received royal charter , type ...

(UK) to discuss the theme "''Towards a European Universities Continuing Education Network''". The represented universities were:

Aalborg Aalborg (, , ) is Denmark's fourth largest town (behind Copenhagen, Aarhus, and Odense) with a population of 119,862 (1 July 2022) in the town proper and an urban population of 143,598 (1 July 2022). As of 1 July 2022, the Municipality of Aalb ...

(DK),

Aarhus Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwest ...

(DK),

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefectur ...

(FR), Bristol (UK),

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

(UK),

Exeter Exeter () is a city in Devon, South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal comm ...

(UK),

Galway Galway ( ; ga, Gaillimh, ) is a City status in Ireland, city in the West Region, Ireland, West of Ireland, in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Connacht, which is the county town of County Galway. It lies on the River Corrib between Lo ...

(IE),

Granada Granada (,, DIN 31635, DIN: ; grc, Ἐλιβύργη, Elibýrgē; la, Illiberis or . ) is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the fo ...

(ES),

Hannover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German States of Germany, state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germa ...

(DE),

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...

(NL), Liege (BE),

Porto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropol ...

(PT),

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

(UK),

Pavia Pavia (, , , ; la, Ticinum; Medieval Latin: ) is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy in northern Italy, south of Milan on the lower Ticino river near its confluence with the Po. It has a population of c. 73,086. The city was the capit ...

(IT) and

Valladolid Valladolid () is a Municipalities of Spain, municipality in Spain and the primary seat of government and de facto capital of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Castile and León. It is also the capital of the province o ...

(ES). The participants at this initial meeting were invited to become the initial Full Members of eucen. The group decided that the main activities of eucen would be the exchange of information on strategies, regulations and techniques, establishing objectives and drawing up plans to meet them, enhancing international contacts, working towards setting standards of quality, agreeing routes to credit transfer and aiming at internationally recognised qualifications through Continuing Education. It was also agreed that an important role for eucen would be to inform policy makers and encourage them to decide on and set goals for Continuing Education development for the year 2000. New members were accepted for first time in eucen's history at the General Assembly in Barcelona in May 1993. From that date, the number of partners and countries involved progressively increased. eucen decided to have two conferences per year and started developing important European projects (for example, TheNUCE). In May 2000, the Association made a radical change in its organization, appointing professional staff and establishing the eucen's Secretariat in Barcelona (ES). In the following years, eucen evolved from being a volunteering network into becoming a wide European multidisciplinary network trying to bring consistency to the concept of University Lifelong Learning. 2004's ''Professions, Competence And Informal Learning'' wrote that as an organization eucen was "especially prolific in publication terms" and that their conference papers were particularly useful as review on European issues of continuing education, concluding that eucen had "opened up the European professional development research community to news of the rapid changes in the field arising from the deep-seated political, social, economic and educational transformations of these former Communist countries in the past 15 years." By 2009, eucen had representative organizations and universities from around 40 countries. In 2020, eucen initiated UniLab, a project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme under KA2 – Capacity Building in Higher Education aimed at updating study programmes in Russia, Belorussia and Azerbaijan by incorporating modern competencies and skills, expanding international cooperation between universities and business and improving the international career centres in the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) of these countries.

References

{{reflist

External links

EUCEN

eucen Studies and eJournal of ULLL
College and university associations and consortia in Europe Continuing education Lifelong learning European Commission Higher education Adult education