Session Information
23 SES 06 A, Higher Education
Paper Session
Contribution
The ‘European Universities Initiative’ (EUI) is considered to be the European Commission’s flagship programme with respect to higher education. It has sought to develop ‘bottom-up’ networks of universities with the aim of enabling students to obtain a degree by combining studies in several European countries, and contributing to the international competitiveness of European universities by strengthening collaboration in both teaching and research. The idea was first mooted in a speech by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in 2017 (Macron, 2017) and, to date, 41 EUIs have been launched, involving 284 higher education institutions (HEIs) from 32 European countries. Because of the funding – through the Erasmus+ mobility scheme as well as the Horizon research programme – participating institutions have had to be part of the Erasmus+ programme (at the time of the first two calls for EUIs, this was the 27 European Union (EU) countries plus Iceland, Norway, Serbia, Turkey and the UK). This has changed in the latest call for EUIs, issued in November 2021, when the scheme was opened up to HEIs located in any of the 49 countries of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) – although non-EU HEIs will not be able to receive any funding. The EUIs form a key part of the European Strategy for Universities (EC, 2022). Indeed, the European Commission hopes that, by the middle of 2024, there will be at least 60 such alliances, covering more than 500 universities. In the strategy, to facilitate the work of the EUIs, member states have been encouraged to develop a ‘European degree’ and introduce appropriate legal statutes.
The EUIs are clearly an important policy initiative in their own right, which may shape the future of higher education on the continent. They also, however, provide a useful lens to explore how European higher education is understood by a range of social actors. It is this latter point that informs this presentation; our aim is to examine what broader messages about the European higher education space (actual and ideal) are conveyed by public discussions about EUIs. We theorise these messages in terms of ‘spatial imaginaries’ i.e. socially held stories that constitute particular ways of talking about places and spaces (Watkins, 2015). Such imaginaries can operate at a variety of scales (from the local to the regional, national, supranational and global) and are typically collective in nature – i.e. shared by groups rather than just held by individuals (ibid.). They are also often considered to have agency of their own, helping to shape material practices through producing, reproducing and changing social perceptions of places even among those who have never been to those specific locations themselves. The stories that are told about places cause people to act in particular ways to and through this spatial imaginary; they are thus frequently held to be performative in nature, not merely representational (Watkins, 2015). Applying such perspectives to Europe in particular, Ruppert and Scheel (2021) have argued that: 'Europe is not singular but multiple. To say this is not to be playful but to highlight that Europe is not given but variously brought into being by a complex of imaginaries, laws and governing practices (p.4)'. Indeed, scholars have shown how understandings of Europe are continually made and remade through myriad practices and narratives, similar to those involved in nation-building and nationalism (e.g. Kohlrausch and Trischler, 2014; Lacriox and Nicolaïdis, 2010). Moreover, they have brought into sharp relief differences in spatial perspective, noting that the European Union is only one way of conceptualising Europe, with the borders between different conceptualisations often fuzzy (Ruppert and Scheel, 2021).
Method
This paper draws on an analysis of relevant policy documents and a series of interviews with various policy actors involved in the EUIs in some capacity. First, with respect to the document analysis, a search was conducted of all organisations that had published publicly-available policies, position papers, press releases or other relevant documents on the EUIs from 2017 (when the idea was first raised) until June 2021. A total of 47 such documents were identified written by: key policy-making bodies, such as the European Commission and EU Council; influential representative organisations, such as the European Students Union and the European University Association; and networks of European universities such as The Coimbra Group and the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education. All documents were uploaded to NVivo (qualitative data software) and analysed using both deductive and inductive methods, with codes derived from the literature discussed above and also, in a grounded manner, from our reading of the texts. In the second stage of data collection, 12 policy actors were identified for interview. Eight of these were representatives of individual EUIs, although this group included one person who was also a key figure in one of the European university networks that preceded the EUIs. Four of these interviewees were located in universities in France, and one in each of Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. The additional four interviewees were from representative organisations: the European University Association (representing universities in general), the European Students’ Union (representing students), The Guild (representing research intensive universities) and the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education (representing universities of applied sciences and university colleges). All interviews were conducted in English over Microsoft Teams, and recorded. They lasted about an hour on average; interviewees were asked a variety of questions about their experience of and views about EUIs to date, and their perspectives on European higher education more generally. In addition, those from representative organisations were asked about the extent to which they had been involved in the policy-making process through, for example, feeding into consultations, and the degree to which they felt their voices had been heard. Detailed notes were taken during and after each interview, and fed into the analysis.
Expected Outcomes
Our data indicate that there are various differences in the future vision for EUIs, which shed light on conceptualisations of the European higher education space. First, contestations about the geographical boundaries of this space were brought into sharp relief by debates about which countries should be able to participate in EUIs. While the European Commission effectively foregrounded the European Union in the first two EUI calls, some policy actors believed that the key boundary should instead be determined by the (much larger) European Higher Education Area, with EUIs helping to reinforce reforms introduced through the Bologna Process. In contrast to both these perspectives, other stakeholders implicitly questioned the idea of a discrete European HE space in their call for HEIs across the world to be able to join the initiative. Here, there are strong parallels with research that has pointed to the different ‘zones’ of Europe, some of which ‘extend beyond what is typically understood as Europe’ (Ruppert and Scheel, 2021, p.7). Second, there is contestation with respect to the nature of the European higher education space (wherever its boundaries may be drawn). While some stakeholders emphasised the importance of inclusivity – with respect to both institutions and students – others felt that it was excellence that should be aimed for, and that this may preclude an emphasis on inclusion. Similar degrees of difference were also played out in relation to the role of nation-states – and the degree of integration that was desirable – in this space. In explaining these different perspectives, we turn to broader political orientations - with respect to European politics, and also the political positioning of higher education actors depending on the groups they represent.
References
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