This year the Provincial Council of Gipukoa’s Kudeatuz programme has given its approval to the IMH’s Co-operative Engineering School project presented by Debegesa, to create a European network of co-operative centres.

One of the project’s activities is to get partners and so this week a Basque delegation has visited Germany made up of Xabier Ortueta, Chairman of the IMH and the Managing Director of the AFM; Joxean Egaña and Ixaka Egurbide Managing Director of the IMH and Director of IMH Co-operative Engineering, the Basque Government’s Deputy Minister and Director of Universities and Director of Employment, Pedro Luis Arias, Zuriñe Gómez de Balugera and Mariano Cortes; the Mayor of Elgoibar, Alfredo Etxeberria and the Managing Director of Debegesa, Juan Angel Balbás.

The visit focused on the DHBW Co-operative University which has 26,000 students in the fields of engineering and economics, and more specifically on the main facilities in Mannheim, which has 5,000 students alone also all on a co-operative basis, as well as local companies and official bodies (Town Hall, Ministry of Science and Technology).

Two colleagues from DHBW Mannheim, Dirk Saller and Anselmo Quijada, visited the IMH in January to talk about what they do at the conference on college-company relations organised by the IMH as part of its 20th anniversary.

The IMH has been running its Co-operative Engineering programme for fifteen years, in which students receive training and at the same time (3 days company, 2 days training) work on a contract basis for a company with which they agree their professional development to meet their company’s specific requirements. In the rest of Europe, co-operative training at the higher education level is common and recognised in the education systems of countries like Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, etc.