M.A. European Youth Studies: European Development Project

The M.A. EYS initiative brings together first-rate teaching and research expertise from throughout Europe to create a unique Bologna 120 ECTS Master’s degree in European Youth Studies, a specialist and interdisciplinary field that emerged in the 1990s in response to the rapidly changing European social mosaic and its implications for the study of youth in the life-course and for young people’s lives.

Theoretical approaches to youth studies have always been multi-disciplinary in nature; the step towards interdisciplinary perspectives reflects the search for integrated and holistic frameworks of understanding in highly complex, globalising societies. Empirical studies of young people have always used a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods; the increasing relevance of comparative and intercultural research brings new challenges for improving the quality of information about youth in Europe and in relation with other world regions.

The youth studies field has always taken account of policy relevance, and much research is linked with concrete needs for information and insight; today, European countries exchange and cooperate in developing and implementing youth policy and action – this extends the scope for conceptualising policy-relevance and for building constructive links between research and policymaking. Those who work directly with young people – in education, vocational training, non-formal/informal youth education and youth work, leisure and sports activities, social and health services, information and advice, counselling and guidance, voluntary activities and youth organisations – have always made some use of research-based knowledge to inform their practice. The continuous search for quality in professional and voluntary practice now faces rising demands, as educational provision and social services restructure their contents and their ways of working to adapt to the changing contexts in which young people in Europe are growing up and experiencing young adulthood.

The M.A. EYS development project is anchored in designing and delivering a high-quality postgraduate qualification that is genuinely international in concept and practice, and which aims to bridge research and action, theory and practice. Ultimately, the course should set the quality reference point and benchmark for improving and sustaining the supply of qualified personnel required in the coming decades to take forward the development of European youth research that is also capable of informing policy, of intelligent, knowledge-driven policymaking, and of high quality, evidence-based practice in the youth sector.

Envisaged as a genuinely European-level qualification accredited by a network of European university partners, the development and the potential of the M.A. EYS benefits from support from international institutional and professional key players. The current advisory and support network comprises the European Commission/Council of Europe Youth Partnership, the Council of Europe Directorate of Youth and Sports’ European Youth Centres, the European Youth Forum, ISA: Research Committee 34 (Sociology of Youth) and ESA: Research Network Youth and Generation.

The M.A. EYS programme is a multilingual and international course. It accepts and supports linguistic and cultural diversity, provides access to a transnational knowledge base, fosters intercultural competence, and qualifies for professional work in multilingual, multicultural settings.

The M.A. EYS curriculum does not comprise an addition of modules developed and delivered independently by individual partner universities. The course is based on a genuinely transnational architecture that presupposes integrative development and delivery. In practice, this means that faculty and students function as a virtual international postgraduate college. Student mobility is therefore an important and integrated element of the course architecture itself, and not simply a formal requirement. All students will spend a semester in another country, but this is woven into continuous participation in an authentic international working and studying community.

The M.A. EYS is therefore highly distinctive in character. Firstly, no comparable interdisciplinary, international and multilingual Bologna Master’s degree is currently offered in this or closely related fields. Secondly, the course specifically aims to develop organic links between the three main fields of the youth sector: youth research, youth policy and youth work. The M.A. EYS clearly fills an education and qualification gap at national and European levels, and it promises to set new standards for higher education innovation in Europe.

Yael Ohana - Project Coordinator
e-mail:yael@frankly-speaking.org
web:www.nonformality.org and www.frankly-speaking.org