The EU4DUAL Student Council held its first meeting in Malta during the Alliance’s 2024 Annual Conference week. With the following editions in Donostia–San Sebastián and Bidart in 2025, and Heilbronn in 2026, conference week has become one of the few occasions when student representatives from across the Alliance can sit around the same table.
For the representatives, part of the value lies in comparing what it is like to be a dual student at different universities. How do students manage when coursework and workplace commitments compete for their time? What kind of mentoring helps them make the transition from the classroom to the company? Meeting in person gives representatives time to discuss what works at their own institutions, learn from one another and identify challenges worth raising together.
Conference week also gives students direct access to the people developing EU4DUAL’s programmes and services. In discussions with the leaders of the Alliance’s work packages, representatives can explain how a proposal might work in practice, raise questions that matter to their peers and suggest changes while there is still time to make them. Academics, employers and other partners, in turn, hear directly from the students who move between university and the workplace.
One public example of that contribution is EU4DUAL’s 2025 Policy White Paper. Its Student Council section records both what students value about dual education, including relevant work experience and financial independence, and what they find difficult, including heavy workloads and conflicting schedules. It gives the Alliance a student perspective to draw on when designing future opportunities. Read the Student Council’s contributions in section 4.3.
Explore the three Annual Conferences: Malta 2024 · Basque Country 2025 · Germany 2026