Specialists in charge of employment and work have to confront two fundamental trends: a profound transformation of work and employment relations; and the increasing interdependency across borders.
The MEST (European Masters in Employment Studies) programme is a response to this increasing need to take European and cross-national interdependencies and their consequences for work and employment into consideration.
Initiated in 1988, it educates future specialists in work, employment relations and social policies : human resource managers, labour law experts, work psychologists, policy-makers and consultants. It develops these future professional capacity to :
- interpret political, economic and cultural characteristics and trends affecting work and employment within national systems ;
- consider the similarities and differences across countries as well as cross-country interdependencies, by using a comparative approach ;
- take account of the impact of European integration and globalisation on employment practices.
With these aims in mind, the MEST programme does not concentrate only on student mobility, but consists of a joint programme between several institutions that genuinely integrates the comparative dimension with a European-level approach to employment studies.
Academic co-operation:
In terms of academic co-operation, MEST combines the following features :
- pooling several disciplines – law, economics, psychology, management and sociology – and various cultural traditions to accommodate both individual and institutional needs ;
- contributing to the capacity of all participants – both students and staff – to share knowledge and experience across borders ;
- supporting a research network with demonstrated comparative capacity and an up-to-date approach to work and employment issues, which pays special attention to the developments of the European social model and the Lisbon strategy ;
- contributing to the quality and visibility of European higher education by means of a common curriculum jointly developed by the Consortium, with equivalent qualification requirements for students and equivalent educational levels in the programmes of study.