Institutionalisation and Jointness of Purpose-Driven Transnational Higher Education Networks: A Comparative Analysis of European Universities alliances

As the European Universities alliances must have a long-term strategy linking education with research, innovation and society at large, promoting the EU Treaty values and addressing societal challenges, the alliances can be characterised as purpose-driven transnational higher education networks. This purpose-drivenness distinguishes the European Universities from most other transnational higher education networks, collaborative partnerships, alliances, academic associations, programme/project consortia and students/staff mobility networks which are primarily mission-, interest-, disciplinary-, programme-, project- or exchange-driven. Its purpose-drivenness necessitates that the alliance becomes a transformational partnership with long-term institutional platforms for collaborative work which in turn foster the institutionalisation of the network. Such strategic alliances fit the definition of governance networks that are on the one hand subject to ongoing processes of institutionalisation but on the other hand, due to the absence of a sovereign power and the ambiguity and openness of the institutional framework of the network, tend to trigger processes of de-institutionalisation as well. Despite these countervailing forces of institutionalisation and de-institutionalisation, the purpose-driven nature of the alliance requires a high level of “jointness” to effectively establish e.g. a joint educational and research provision. Therefore, jointness must become a core part of the institutional logics of the alliance, perhaps blending with the institutional logics of the partner universities. To what extent can we observe processes of (de-)institutionalisation and jointness in European Universities alliances? And how can alliances be compared in view of these processes and the centrality of purpose in their long-term strategies? To answer these research questions the alliances' long-term strategies, the representativeness of stakeholders and relative autonomy of the alliances' governance structure (as indicators of institutionalisation) and the extent of joint provision and emergence of a joint quality assurance system (as indicators of jointness) will be examined. In view of the relatively recent development of European Universities, and as both institutionalisation and jointness processes are heavily time-dependent, we will limit this research to a selection of the alliances of the first call (2019) of the European Universities Initiative.