Universities initiative must not crowd out other networks

EU-funded bandwagon should leave space for other alliances, say Anthony Forster and Silvia Gómez Recio

European universities’ tradition of partnership and peer learning is much older than the EU. But the EU has brought a new, very particular character and dynamic to such collaborations: namely, top-down access to sometimes significant funding and interventions aimed at creating stronger political integration and an ever-closer union. 

These goals lay behind policies and initiatives including the 1987 Erasmus programme focused on student mobility and the 1999 Bologna process to create a European Higher Education Area. They alo lay behind the 2017 European Universities Initiative (EUI) to create transnational alliances aimed at promoting European values and identity, and revolutionising the competitiveness of European higher education.