A Strategy for Europe in the Age of the Knowledge Society: Building New Knowledge Networks among Traditional and Distance Universities. New Internet-based Contents for a Global Labour Market

A generational clash of enormous scope is emerging within our institutions. The criticisms TO university advanced 15 years ago were "waiting ideas'': waiting for the new Web and a new generation of students able to effectively put in question the old model of University. University in the knowledge society globalized and interconnected has reached a turning point, we are at a crossroads between stagnation and renewal, between atrophy and the Renaissance. Universities can make use of the most powerful platform in history to make available the expertise, the knowledge, the skills to defeat ignorance. In 2016, according to Cisco Systems, there will be 10 billion mobile devices connected on Internet compared to UN world population estimated at about 7.3 billion of people. This means that, on average, each person will have more than one device for the connection. Unfortunately, we must see that the political world has not really become aware of the value o this great transformation and all school and university reforms of the various countries are still focused on their own models of schools and universities. While Society moves into global economy, School and University still produce local competencies. At present, however, there are very interesting facts going on worldwide: a number of prestigious universities, such as Harvard, Stanford, M.I.T., are tearing down their ivory towers by networking with other companies to make their content available on the Web. The technological network is also working to create a network of universities and people, with the purpose of transmitting and sharing each other's knowledge. In the "virtual classrooms" students of different cultures and languages confront and interact with each other without frontiers and borders playing an active role and becoming active builders of new knowledge according to collaborative dimension of learning. Therefore, the problem, share by all universities worldwide, is not whether education reproduces or not social inequalities, but how to better adapt to this system and how to create, within the context of a globalized economy, systems that could develop integrated teaching and learning processes, using different languages for communication of knowledge, and open, operating without boundaries and limits of space and time. University systems should be able to develop an educational space "intra muros” and "extra muros”. Distance university, in the new context, is not an alternative to traditional university, but it represents a new opportunity, a way to acquire new vitality in the processes of teaching and research in traditional universities.