They made it through a process of selection amid the 54 applicantions. The chosen projects will involve 114 higher education institutions from 24 Member States. They were evaluated by “26 independent external experts, including rectors, professors and researchers, appointed by the Commission”, as reports the press release. The pilot initiative is now ready to take off.

What is it about?

The goal of the project is to enhance the quality and attractiveness of European higher education and boost cooperation between institutions, their students and staff. This will be reached thanks to closer collaborations, different from the ones already existing. European Universities in fact are meant to be “inter-university campuses around which students, doctoral candidates, staff and researchers can move seamlessly”.

Learners will be given the opportunity to personalize their curricula, by choosing between a set of courses in different institutions, depending on the features of the project. These curricula will then be officially recognized all across Europe and the participants will get an European degree. The projects are designed to make also an impact on the community they are located in: “European Universities will also contribute to the sustainable economic development of the regions where they are located, as their students will work closely with companies, municipal authorities, academics and researchers to find solutions to the challenges their regions are facing”.

Tibor Navracsics, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, said: “I am pleased to see the ambition of the first 17 European Universities, which will act as role models for others across the EU. They will enable the next generations of students to experience Europe by studying in different countries. I am convinced that this initiative, a key building block of the European Education Area, will be a real game changer for higher education in Europe, boosting excellence and inclusion.”

How much is the budget?

The total budget available amounts to EUR 85 million – 5 million for each university alliance. The alliances have to be implemented and carried out within 3 years. This phase is really important, as this is a pilot initiative, to pave the way for more similar projects to come. There will be a close monitoring activity, in order to register pros and cons of every step. The first budget proposal was drafted in the Erasmus+ Annual Work Program 2019; it reached 60 million after its amendement, and inflated again after a redeployment of funds followinf a proposal of the European Commission.

When will there be the next chance to apply?

The call was published last October. The projects under this call are meant to be a test for the ones to come. The next call will be pulished in autumn and will foresee similar pilot initiatives. The test period will last for the biennium 2019-20, waiting for the actual projects to be rolled out from 2021.

Click here to view the list of the selected institutions.

L'articolo European Universities: first 17 institutions selected proviene da Youth Networks.

What do we mean with “European Universities”?

According to the guidelines provided by the Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2019 (see p. 125), “European University” is a KA2 initiative, under the Sector Skill Alliances, based on “sustainable bottom-up networks that are geographically and socially inclusive and work seamlessly across borders” (as stated in the comunication of the Commission dating back to 22 May 2018), within which the students will be able to combine several experiences of studying and training abroad. What’s relevant is that not only universities, but also any public or private organisation is entitled to take part to the project – as associated partner of an Higher Education Institution holding a valid Erasmus Charter for Higher Education (ECHE).

The goal

As one can read on the Programme Guide, there are two main goals:

• the first, “to promote common European values as enshrined in article 2 of the Treaty on European Union and a strengthened European identity by bringing together a new generation of Europeans;
• the second, to reach a substantial leap in quality, performance, attractiveness and international competitiveness of European higher education institutions and contributing to the European knowledge economy, employment, culture and welfare”.

These follow the comunication of 22 May 2018 (“Building a stronger Europe: the role of youth, education and culture policies“), that set out the main components of the future European Education Area – to be implemented by 2025.

It is then a long-term joint strategy “for pursuing a high level of enhanced, sustainable cooperation across various levels of the organisation, and across different areas of activity, building on their complementary strengths”. All of this will also serve as a model of good practice, enabling also the partner organisations to contribute to the developmet both of the initiative and of the EEA itself.

“Establishing the European Education Area will enable the EU Member States to do more, faster, to drive up the quality, competitiveness and inclusiveness of their education and training systems, while providing inspiration to non-EU countries to follow”, as per the 22 May Comunication.

The role of organisations

The link between education and “research, innovation and society at large” is underpinned when remarking that the whole initiative is based on sharing competences. Any partner can welcome students, doctoral candidates and staff, enabling them to complete their education.

The Budget

The total budget for this inititive is EUR 30 mio for 2019, with each grant that will have an average value of EUR 5 mio for three years.

For further information, check out our section “available grants“.

L'articolo European Universities: how to take part in the brand-new initiative of 2019 proviene da Youth Networks.

The main goal of the Area is to empower education at European level, in order to enhance employability, to promote common values and to facilitate the mutual recognition of diplomas in the different European countries. 

Indeed, the most striking initiative is the prevision of an European Cooperation for Education and Training (ET2020). Such a forum, based on common goals, will help bringing together the Member States through the setting of several benchmarks, listed on the Commission website:

• At least 95% of children should participate in early childhood education;
• fewer than 15% of 15-year-olds should be under-skilled in reading, mathematics and science;
• the rate of early leavers from education and training aged 18-24 should be below 10%;
• at least 40% of people aged 30-34 should have completed some form of higher education;
• at least 15% of adults should participate in lifelong learning;
• at least 20% of higher education graduates and 6% of 18-34 year-olds with an initial vocational qualification should have spent some time studying or training abroad;
• the share of employed graduates (aged 20-34 with at least upper secondary education attainment and having left education 1-3 years ago) should be at least 82%.

A set of working groups, formed by experts and stakeholders named by the Member States and the Commission, will cooperate to develop new policies to reach the goals drawn up by the ET2020 programme. Each of them will pursue a strategic objective, working in thematic groups. 

The first package of measures in order to reach the EEA has been taken earlier this year. A recommendation from the Commission, adopted on May the 22nd, foreshadowed the improvement of key competences for lifelong learning (which aims “to build on strong collaboration and synergies between industry, education, training and learning settings”); a “Digital Education Action Plan”, to be developed in the schools mainly through the SELFIE platform; and, eventually, the sharing of common values.

Common values, then, but also a common base and common rights for every European citizen, from its early years. The “Early childhood education and care” programme strives to guarantee to everyone good educational services all over the EU, on the base of the common social right to education. “Without high quality early education, a developmental and competences gap develops early between children with different socio-economic backgrounds, therefore, reinforcing the cycle of intergenerational transmission of disadvantage“ states the Council recommendation of May 22nd.

Moreover, mutual recognition of diplomas shall be an automatic principle within 2025, whereas in over 30 years of international mobility for students it is still difficult to have an academic qualification recognized even within the European borders.

Now, a second package of initiatives is being currently rolled out. The European Universities, the European student card, the European semester and, most interesting, a better targeting of the European structural and investment Fund are all part of this latter. More specifically, the ESF has been empowered with a new initiative, the ESF+, that, for the period 2021-27, will merge different kind of funds: the ESF will then become one thing with the Youth Employment Initiative – for the period 2014-20, the total budget of the YEI accounted for 8.8 billion. Indeed, all of this embodies just a part of a bigger project that sees 2020 as an important deadline for many other topics.

As the Commission clarified in the recommendation dating back to May 2018, the whole project shall represent one of the keys to make it possible for the entire European construction to overcome its most-perceived economical features and to strengthen the political view of countries bound together by a background of common values, taught in such a way that, as the years pass by, they can grow more and more organic at European level.

L'articolo European Education Area: new cooperations to be accomplished by 2020 proviene da Youth Networks.