Politecnico reflects on European University Alliances to build the future of the Union

Within the framework of the high-level event “Shaping the future: European Universities alliances for a competitive Europe”, organized by the European Commission, professor Roberto Zanino, Rector's Senior Advisor for International University Networks and the European University Alliance Unite!, was invited to contribute to a panel discussion on the very hot topic “Outlook of the future investment pathway for European Universities: enhancing synergies and efficiently mobilising European and national/regional level funding, including reinforcing the research and innovation dimension of the alliances, in synergy with MSCA and EIT”.

The panel was moderated by DG EAC and was attended by 100+ representatives from both the Commission and the current 65 Alliances. Other invited panelists were professor Dorothy Kelly, University of Granada, Spain, Coordinator of the ARQUS Alliance; doctor Stephan Geifes, Director of the Erasmus+ National Agency DAAD, Germany; Manuel Irun Molina, Head of Grant Implementation unit - European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), while the main outcomes of the panel were reported to the plenary by the rapporteur professor Ludovic Thilly, Vice Rector of the University of Poitiers, Chair of the Coimbra group, coordinator of the EC2U Alliance.

The panelists were asked three guiding questions, and namely: 

1. There is general consensus among the Alliances regarding the need for sustainable funding and, in the same time, there is clear political commitment from the Commission to strengthen the initiative. How should such funding be used to strategically articulate the achievement of the Alliances long-term vision, and the broader EU level objectives, notably regarding closing the skills gaps, including in key strategic domains (sustainability, digital/AI, defence, etc.) making the EU higher education sector more attractive for global talent, and increasing EU competitiveness, including in the green and digital transitions?

2. In operational terms, how should such sustainable funding for the Alliances be articulated? What are the key needs: simplification? Going beyond project-based approaches?

3. Synergies between European funding schemes and with contributions from regional and national funding are essential for the financial sustainability of the Alliances, enabling their further development across all their missions, on top the core education and governance dimension funded by Erasmus+. Where do you see an effective lever to activate synergies, notably for the research and innovation dimension? How to leverage sustainable funding also at national/regional levels, in link with the added value of the Alliances at national level?

Professor Roberto Zanino reacted to the three guiding questions as follows:

“Competitiveness, more precisely to "contribute to the international competitiveness of european universities", was already present as a keyword in the original mission foreseen for the european university Alliances, in the European Council conclusions following the Macron Sorbonne speech in 2017. However, this part of the mission was initially somehow sidelined by the other part, stated in the same document, and namely to "enable students to obtain a degree by combining studies in several EU countries", with a very strong push towards ambitious mobility targets. Indeed, the latter was probably considered more natural and in line with the traditional framework of Erasmus+ projects, also taking into account that Alliances were being asked to develop strategies to benefit all the remaining 90% of the HEIs not directly involved in Alliances -- a clearly inclusive and as such seemingly noncompetitive target, which is essential also at Member State/Conference of Rectors level. Today the Alliances are asked to contribute to the EU competitiveness, an even more ambitious target. Probably the first answer to this challenge, at least in the medium to long term, comes from the Letta report: try and become one instead of 27, realizing the fifth freedom, a single market of competences and skills. In the short term, following the Draghi report, which especially highlights the EU losing terrain in the innovation arena against its main competitors, namely China and the US, sustainable funding of the Alliances could also be devoted to support them in developing strong links with and among the ecosystems of their partners, allowing for instance the development of innovation in one partner's ecosystem starting from research performed by another partner. This might be an especially sensible strategy for alliances like Unite!, which, due their strong technology/engineering background, and thanks to their focus on the key EU strategic objectives including energy and AI, have an easier access and a strong set of relations with the industrial partners in their ecosystem. At the same time, developing this network of ecosystems could significantly contribute to the attraction of talented students, PhD students and early career researchers, motivated by the number of different opportunities that those links could offer for their future employment, doctoral theses and r&i collaborations.

A simplification of the funding mechanism, including going beyond project-based approaches based on work packages, deliverables etc, must be absolutely pursued if we want the HEIs participating in the European universities initiative to go beyond the short-term project mentality, and really start thinking about the medium to long term with a program mentality, avoiding artificial separation between education and R&I dimensions, and also considering the fundamental fact that universities are not organized in work packages! Alliances should rather be asked to identify those areas/missions where they think they could better contribute to a few, possibly partly pre-identified macro targets, eg, to increase the EU competitiveness, or to attract international talents, etc, and to develop and implement their own clear plans for that. At the same time, maybe we should talk of sustainable >support<, which includes funding but also political/policy support at EU, national and institutional levels, including the support that the HEIs themselves are providing through the time of their faculty and staff enthusiastically engaged in the initiative since its very beginning, as well as, e.g., through different forms of seed funding. The in-house support from the Alliance partners will then obviously only come if the participation in the Alliance has a clearly identified added value >for each of the partners<, i.e. not only for the Alliance, especially in those Alliances made of Universities characterized by long traditions, and this at least until the governance models of the Alliances will be based mainly on representatives of their partners, rather than on figures with Alliance-wide responsibilities.

If European University Alliances have the ambition to become the models for the universities of the future in the EU, they must develop a holistic strategy involving all university missions, including research and innovation. (By the way, the correctness of the assumption in this syllogism should be first confirmed by the Presidents&Rectors of the universities participating in Alliances.) This holistic approach should be supported by European and national/regional level funding, but in the past it encountered some challenges, related also to different visions by different stakeholders of what the Alliances were and should become. Today, based on the presence of the Alliances in the mission letters of both Commissioners under which DG EAC and DG RTD are respectively located, we strongly hope that a unified vision can be developed leading to a holistic support. The Heitor report, as well as eg CESAER's position paper on Alliances, advocate for such a holistic approach, and the Presidents&Rectors of Unite! very recently reiterated Unite!’s commitment towards Education, Research and Innovation, and even recommended restructuring of the existing tasks to be more targeted towards all three missions. Synergies with the EIT KICs and support from MSCA are being developed and exploited within Unite!, with particular focus on the PhD level -- a topic on which our Alliance is working since its very beginning, in view of its special relevance as a link between the education and the R&I dimension. The future FP10 could foresee also some competitive but dedicated funding to develop the R&I dimension of the Alliances, eg: the PhD, including industrial PhD; strategies for efficient and effective sharing of research infrastructures; best practices for the advancement of the careers of early career researchers; networks of research and technology transfer support offices, etc, in order to make the Alliances eventually competitive in the open range”.