EuroAcademics

Your addition/changes to List of universities in Belgium

Dear EuroAcademics, I refer to the changes you made to the List of universities in Belgium. I would like to raise some issues here about the things you added/changed.

"Belgium is a federal state in which the Flemish and French Communities have legal competency over subsidised higher education."

There are three Communities in Belgium and, yes, even the German Community has higher education.

These communities have full competency over all types of education, not only subsidised/public funded. Partly because of the discussions in the WTO, and especially GATS, the communities have introduced legislation to accept (or register) private higher education institutions and recognised their degrees.

I would therefore prefer to re-introduce "Belgium is a federal state where the communities have full legal competency over higher education."

"The list of Community-recognised universities, colleges, and institutes is published in ..."

I refer to the remark above. These publications also cover private higher education institutions. An example is Vesalius College: an independent, American style institution in Brussels. As a private entreprise, their degrees where not recognised. Since they got themselves registered as a higher education institution, they are part of the recognised higher education institutions.

"A few international institutions of higher education are also established in Belgium, by virtue of European accords, or of other national or international educational and legal rights."

Can you please point me towards these European accords? I am quite familiar with higher education issues and international law, including issues arising from within the following frameworks: WTO, UNESCO, OECD, Bologna Process and EU. I don't see any legal basis for establishing higher education institutions that would grant recognised degrees without any involvment of the competent authorities. I also refer to the discussion we are having about recognition at Talk:List of universities in Belgium.

You used "Colleges" as a translation for Hogescholen or Hautes Ecoles

In Belgium, the word college is used for certain types of secondary education institutions. The institutions we are referring to here call themselves University colleges to make clear that they are neither a college nor a university.

I would therefore prefer renaming these institutions to University colleges.--O-AoA-o 16:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)