ACA staff has lead the first training seminar organised in the context of the Erasmus Mundus project “Promoting European Higher Education through Educational Advising Centres' Network” (PEHE-EACN, see ACA Newsletter- Education Europe, August 2005). The seminar, targeted at 33 trained educational advisers from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Armenia, took place in Tbilisi, Georgia, on 6 and 7 March 2006. It provided a general overview of the Lisbon and Bologna Processes and their main “elements”, like the new degree structures and ECTS. Presentations also covered issues like scholarship programmes, marketing and information portals or tuition fees. Feedback from participants was extremely positive, with one major message: more and more accessible information on European higher education is needed.       

The Open Society Institute Hungary is the lead institution in this project, which involves, next to the ACA Secretariat, ACA members DAAD, Nuffic and The British Council, as well as the French organisation CNOUS. The project aims at promoting European higher education for students and scholars from the Caucasus and Central Asia, so as to raise the visibility and attractiveness of European universities in those countries and to enable the students and scholars to make informed choices when making decisions on study and research abroad. Other three training seminars will be held in Baku, Tbilisi, Almaty and Vilnius in the course of 2006.