European Universities: A regional higher education palimpsest

Since 2019, the European Commission has set out on the endeavour to create ‘European Universities’ through its newest higher education programme, the European Universities Initiative (EUI). These ‘European Universities’ are transnational university alliances composed of four to thirteen higher education institutions found throughout the entire European Union (EU) and participating Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020 countries. The EUI is the EU’s flagship initiative towards building a higher education dimension of a European Education Area (EEA). This paper explores how and for what purposes these university alliances seek to build a regional higher education space in the European Union. In a first instance this research discusses the European Commission’s political objectives and what purposes Member States see in the formation of this regional higher education space: the creation of transnational alliances destined to become ‘elite European universities’ or of an inclusive higher education space that encapsulates the full diversity of the European higher education landscape. We then investigate how these ‘European Universities’ are the result of different European histories of higher education cooperation: bilateral links at faculty level, institutional partnerships, participation in research networks. Finally, while being a novel space, the EEA is being constructed alongside the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). We explore if the EEA is driven by an idea of ‘moving past’ the EHEA or existing in complementarity to it. The European Universities Initiative builds something new while leaving traces of what it is constructed on top of, much like a higher education palimpsest. This research is a single case study of the first two pilot phases of the European Universities Initiative with two alliances as embedded units of analysis: ECIU and UNITA. 70 semi-structured interviews and qualitative network mapping exercises were conducted with coordinators from 31 alliances, representatives from national ministries, both European Commission Directorate Generals in charge of the initiative, their corresponding executive agencies as well as senior managers, administrative staff and students from the higher education institutions participating in both alliances selected as units of analysis. This inquiry is situated at the intersection of research on networks, EU governance and comparative regionalism and aims to contribute to the interdisciplinary scholarships in higher education and European studies.