Get smart, Swiss smart: who'd want to settle for just a Swiss watch or Swiss chocolate when you can also have a Swiss diploma? Let's look at how you can take advantage of the adult advancement opportunities on offer ...
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Swiss universities offer high-quality tuition at a good price, and have recently been expanding their English-language courses. This means that speakers of English, who may not be very strong in other languages, can benefit from the long heritage of high-quality education in Switzerland.
Switzerland has a huge amount of foreign residents--nearly a fifth of the population, in fact. It follows then, that Switzerland also boasts the highest percentage of foreign students attending its universities in Europe, according to CRUS (Rectors' Conference of the Swiss Universities). Where until recently courses were predominantly offered in French, German and Italian, now the number of postgraduate courses offered either partially or exclusively in English has risen to 225-124 of which are taught entirely in English. It is now possible to find a course in English in a large variety of subjects, from sciences and medicine, through law and economics, to business administration and the arts.
Educational reform
Universities across Europe have been undergoing massive restructuring over the past decade as a result of the Lisbon and Bologna Conventions. These conventions called for a homogenised system of higher education across Europe.
This means that since 2001/2002, Swiss universities have been abandoning the traditional four-to-six year Lizentiat courses--similar to a combined Bachelor and Master's degree--in favour of courses that conform to the Bachelor, Master and Doctorate degree models, and are regulated in length by what is known as the European Credit Transfer System, or ECTS.
As holding a Lizentiat is comparable to holding a Master's degree, one of the big problems of old was determining where foreign students with Bachelor's qualifications could enter a Swiss course of study, how many credits could be transferred, and how many needed to be made up.
This homogenisation has eased the process of recognition of qualifications across borders and will improve the potential for exchanging ideas between students and researchers, according to CRUS. This means that entering a foreign university, including having your existing qualifications recognised and appraised, is no longer as complicated as it once was.
Another upshot of the Bologna Convention is an organisation called Euraxess, which is maintained by the European Commission, and is essentially a networking platform for researchers. Euraxess aids academic researchers who are searching for projects to take part in, or for an institution to support a project of their own.
Getting oriented
In order to understand where to look for information and courses being offered, it is also...
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