Numerous proposals have been received for the pilot call of the European Universities Initiative, Tibor Navracsics, the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sports, has confirmed.
The call for candidates for the pilot has proved very popular, with European Commission officials reporting one information day meeting in Brussels in December packed out with 300 people while a thousand more followed the proceedings on line.
As a result, on 12 February the European Commission announced that the programme had been allocated an additional €30 million (US$34 million), doubling the total to €60 million for the pilot, enabling 12 of the 54 networks to be selected for funding in the first stage of the pilot. The European Universities strand of Erasmus+ will have another call for proposals later in 2019 with a deadline in October.
Where existing university networks in Europe are mostly short-term arrangements for three to five years, this initiative is intended to support the development of networks geared to 20- to 30-year strategies, enabling a deep level of integration.
At an information meeting in Brussels in December, organised by the EU’s Erasmus programme and attended by several potential candidate consortia, Navracsics called for “a shared, integrated, long-term joint strategy for education with links, when possible, to research and innovation and to society” and to “a European curriculum leading to a European degree”.
He said they were looking for a curriculum with innovative pedagogics and embedded structured student mobility and that the first pilot European Universities project will test “different innovative and structural models for implementing and achieving long-term visions through a step-by-step approach”.
The hope is, for instance, that in a partnership on European studies a student could go to Paris to study law, to Rome for economics and Athens for history as part of the same degree programme, attending either in person or virtually, with a guarantee that the qualification would be systematically recognised across borders.
In addition to deepening European university collaboration and strengthening their strategic approach, the European Universities Initiative is aimed at taking advantage of Europe’s diversity. Older university networks can be supported to scale up their collaboration to a higher level. In the longer run European universities will be expected to contribute to the European Diploma and act as a beacon of good practice, contributing to the building of a European Education Area.
At the December meeting, position papers were presented by the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU); the European University Foundation (EUF); the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities; and the University of the Greater Region (UniGR), which offers the opportunity to study and conduct research in three languages, five regions and six universities.
The European Universities Initiative has generated enthusiasm among both new and older established university networks such as the Coimbra Group and the Network of Universities from the Capitals of Europe, with the 39 Coimbra Group member universities allegedly being involved in seven of the 54 consortia applying for funding.
One of the consortia, the 4EU+ European University Alliance, is coordinated by Sorbonne University – the 2018 merger of Pierre and Marie Curie University with Paris-Sorbonne University and eight other higher education and research institutions in Paris – catering for 60,000 students, of which 5,000 are PhD students. The five other historical universities in the consortium are Charles University in Prague, Heidelberg University, the University of Warsaw, University of Copenhagen and the University of Milan. Sorbonne University said in a press release that the 4EU+ Alliance aims to create a “new quality of cooperation in teaching, education, research and administration and to establish the appropriate infrastructure which will bring together professors, researchers, students and staff from six institutions”.
“The cooperation is based on a common understanding of the idea of the European university that builds on academic freedom and autonomy and ensures fair access to education,” the statement said.
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