This initiative is intended to bring the highest achieving university students from around the world into one scholarship programme, sponsored by multinational corporate partners. Students will have the opportunity to study and have work experience in 2 or more countries. The programme is still under development. Currently this project is concerned with portability of accounting credentials and a number of U21 institutions have signed an agreement allowing academic portability. Other opportunities for portability are being considered ie.
Education is another area for potential portability.
No doubt colleagues will have other ideas as to possible initiatives that U21 might pursue, eg international seminars on policy issues. All suggestions will be passed on to the Secretariat so please feel free to put forward suggestions. There is a number of examples of activities which have been launched involving the University of Nottingham. One of these is the Virtual School of Biodiversity which is a collaborative venture between the University of Hong Kong and this University. The focus is on virtual education and the project is to combine complementary technical and scientific skills with a commitment to educational excellence in the field of Biodiversity.