Which is the statement of your action, within the FIPSE ?

Erasmus represents a possible workfield at the continental level. It's, I think, a marvelous and appealing model and Americans have a good opportunity to get to know this new structure and the new Europe, which was, for most Americans a sort of concept. Besides, Erasmus gives the opportunity to junior members to participate, in an active way, to exchanges themselves. In this way, Erasmus works for preparing the New Europeans for post-Maastricht Europe.

We were able to acknowledge more experiment, which in fact allowed American universities to find consortium withe the European ones to do something like was done in the Erasmus. That was looked out on some scepticism on both sides, of course, with probably more scepticism in Brussels, because naturally it had been invented to an interior European model. So we found money at both sides for the first few years, and nothing attracts money like success. With the first years we had around 500 institutions that applied voluntarily. And at the present time, things follow their course.

What can be the role of education in the New Transatlantic Agenda ?

I think It's very important to rebuild the whole transatlantic concept, which is, in a historical point of view, a very important concept. With the decline of the Soviet system and the threat that they represented, the question of what else they would resize their strategical lines becomes a crucial question.

And obviously there are two things:

Another thing which is also very important, is that we do things differently on both sides of the Atlantic and yet we have common problems : environmental problems, teaching problems, trade issues.

But contacts make it valuable for people to know about the practices on both sides of the Atlantic. Some fields where American practitioners and European ones should interact are very important.

Besides the exchanges of students, staff or professors, do you see any other kind of co-operation between universities or education systems between the US and EU ?

Probably the most important one that matters is research cooperation. There is only something like 35 or 40 thousand Americans that study in Europe, which is small. There is an urgent need of developing all kinds of exchanges in a Transatlantic level. At the present time there are a lot of Joint-Ventures projects and we need to develop them.

How do you see the development of international education in the United States ?

I think that it's quite popular. More than a half of the students of Colgate University have studied abroad, which is very common in the American educational system. Actually, it seems to be a kind of coincidence between the European interest in vocational training and American interest in using federal money to democratize opportunities, and they come together in the fact that there are massive experiences to communicate. There is also a development of technical schools on both side of the Atlantic, which are promoting students'exchanges, who never, in a previous generation, would have been involved in foreign studies.

What do you think about the situation of teaching foreign languages in the United States ?

I think it's on a decline, and there are many reasons for that : English is spoken more and more around the world, but in fact, the only place where people don't seem to learn english very well is in the United States.

Everywhere else in the world people are learning English at a great rate, and in the United States we have plenty of people who don't.

How do you see the impact of Internet in the internalization of the area of education, in the next coming years ?

I think that this one of these things that doesn't need any government help. The fact that you have instant e-mail for free anywhere in the world, will be very usefull for foreign studies, for example. Thanks to Internet, exchanges between students can be increased, without any worry of frontieres.

What are, in your opinion, the abilities which the future leaders will have to control in various sectors ?

I think, that we need to prepare people for multinationals corporations like architecture firms, engineerig firms, while maintaining a common skill of values and cultures and prospective. That is essential, because we had two world wars and that we are in perpetual peace is vague; so it is terribly important that in the future time, for both sides, that there will be sustained network of cultural and value relationships.

What policy is followed in the matter of cultural diversities ?

The United States needs to understand the new Europe, because the issue of the challenge of cultural diversity is the basic American challenge today. I believe there should be a boarder study of models that have worked elsewhere and models that haven't worked elsewhere. In the Stalinian system, there was was a response to the challenge of cultural diversity. Colonialism was also a response to the challenge of cultural diversity. The United States needs to know about the European model and to study its successes and its failures.

What about the complexity ?

I think that the danger is overspecialization, even for people with many specialities. They may not be able to see how these specialities speak to each other. So I think that synthetization is very important for the leaders. I fear that the Americanization of education is not the right direction, because I believe there is a tendancy of American Colleges to modulize the education. I'm worried a little, because that may happen in Europe.