Europäische Hochschulallianzen in Aktion

Martin Ebner; Channa Van der Brug; Elena Wilhelm

doi:10.21240/zfhe/21-2/00

Through the European Universities Initiative (EUI), the European Commission has, since 2019, been pursuing the goal of establishing transnational higher education alliances as the universities of the future. These alliances are intended to structurally deepen cooperation between European higher education institutions in education, research and innovation, facilitate the mobility of students and staff, and develop joint, student-centred curricula and research strategies. At the same time, the initiative aims to strengthen European values and enhance the continent’s competitiveness – thereby making a key contribution to the integration of the European Higher Education Area.

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With the European Universities Initiative (EUI), the European Commission has been pursuing the goal of establishing transnational higher education alliances as universities of the future since 2019. These alliances are intended to structurally deepen cooperation between European higher education institutions in education, research and innovation, facilitate the mobility of students and teachers, and develop joint, student-centred curricula and research strategies. At the same time, the initiative aims to strengthen European values and the continent's competitiveness, thereby making a significant contribution to the integration of the European Higher Education Area (European Commission, 2023).

According to an analysis by the European Parliamentary Research Service, by early 2025 there will already be 65 alliances in 35 countries with over 570 higher education institutions and around 11 million students. This impressive momentum not only marks a new stage in European higher education policy, but also raises fundamental questions: How do governance structures, organisational cultures and epistemic orders change when universities are integrated into such far-reaching transnational alliances? What tensions arise between European control logics and national claims to autonomy? What ideas of science, education and identity shape the emerging field of European university alliances?

While the European Commission's political agenda focuses on integration, efficiency and coherence, research increasingly points to the ambivalence of this development. On the one hand, new spaces for institutional cooperation are opening up, but on the other hand, there is a threat of homogenisation, underfunding, standardisation and hierarchisation, which could marginalise smaller or non-university higher education institutions in particular (Vukasovic & Stensaker, 2018) . The EU can thus be understood as both a testing ground and a zone of conflict: a space in which questions of power, difference, governance and cultural identity are being renegotiated in the European higher education area.

Authors

Martin Ebner
TU Graz
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5789-5296
Channa Van der Brug
Stifterverband
https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0209-9398
Elena Wilhelm
Zürcher Hochschule der Künste
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-9514-9198

How to Cite

Ebner, M., Van der Brug, C., & Wilhelm, E. (2026). European University Alliances in Action. Zeitschrift für Hochschulentwicklung (Journal for Higher Education Development), 21(2), 9–17. https://doi.org/10.21240/zfhe/21-2/00

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