Ever more connected universities

Audio 19:29

Harvard University. © Getty Images / Pgiam

By: Frédérique Lebel

20 million students in Europe and an ever wider and more competitive offer. World rankings, especially that of Shanghai, give the Old Continent only a small place. Far behind major American universities, but across Europe, we innovate and get closer to business.

Publicity

In Malta, the University of blockchains
Example in Malta, this small Mediterranean and English-speaking island aims to become the world reference in blockchain. A word little known to the general public, but essential for the businesses of tomorrow. It designates a means of transmitting and storing information, for example on a transaction, in an extremely secure manner. Cutting-edge technology that will be central, in particular for the development of cryptocurrencies, these fictitious currencies that are growing everywhere on the planet. The University of Malta has just opened a multidisciplinary master's degree in blockchains. Report signed Cécile Debarge .

Swiss polytechnic excellence
And in the international rankings, Switzerland is doing well, very well even, thanks to two essential institutes. Two federal polytechnics, in Lausanne and Zurich, where Albert Einstein studied… to name but one!
An excellence that attracts businesses, which do not hesitate to set up directly on campuses. In Switzerland, Jérémie Lanche .

In the name of Finnish design
And in Finland, a small country of almost 6 million inhabitants, we understood that we had to bet on what already makes its world renown: its designers.
The most famous of them, Alvar Aalto has a university in his name. A multidisciplinary university which was born in 2010 from the merger of three establishments. We train engineers, architects, designers, but also sales people.
12,000 students come to learn outside of traditional settings, for example in the “design factory”, a place of experimentation to develop new products that Lea Lisa Westerhoff visited.

The column "In a word"
Oxala Oxala is Teresa Salgado, the singer of the legendary group Madredeus, who introduces our column this week in one word. A difficult word to translate, but which gives us a key to understanding one of our neighbors.
This week, we are therefore looking at the Portuguese word Oxala, a word that we often use in Lisbon and elsewhere at the start of a sentence, to mark a wish, a desire. A hope that, with Arab and Spanish origins, which most Portuguese do not know. Explanations from Marie-Line Darcy.

Long live teletext!
In the era of podcasts, streaming, 24-hour news channels, an ancestor of continuous news still stands up very well in Austria: it's teletext. This service, which provides information in the form of texts via television, celebrated its 40th anniversary yesterday (January 21, 2020)! Céline Béal explains how.

(Replay of January 22, 2020)

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  • Education
  • Finland
  • Malta
  • New technologies
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