EU backs EUA’s vision of ‘universities without walls’

A new 10-year vision of creating universities without walls, with a focus on openness and engagement with society – while defending academic freedom and democratic values – was welcomed by one of the heads of the European Union at the 2021 European University Association (EUA) annual conference on 22 April.

Charles Michel, president of the European Council, which sets the EU’s overall direction and political priorities, told the online conference that “universities can, and must, play a vigorous role in shaping this common future” and suggested the green and digital transitions would define the coming century.

The two-day conference saw the official launch of the EUA’s Universities Without Walls: A vision for 2030, which Michel said implied “adaptability and openness”, including embracing the new “digital campus” and being open to joining forces with other sectors of society and showing “greater flexibility and cooperation among universities across Europe”.

In a video message to the conference, Michel said European universities could come out of the COVID-19 crisis stronger and revitalised by “developing pan-European talent pools in science and technologies”.

But he also warned: “Our democracies are coming under increased pressure. Our universities must therefore continue to be home to academic freedom and democratic values, free speech, gender equality and fundamental rights. These principles must be cherished and nurtured, today more than ever, as they are threatened across the globe.

“Our universities must remain temples of knowledge, talent and evidence-based information. As foreign interference and disinformation seek to infiltrate our societies, intellectual rigour will only grow in importance.”

His speech concluded by reminding the EUA, which represents more than 800 universities in 48 countries, that European leaders had agreed to invest €100 billion (US$120 billion) in the EU’s new Horizon Europe programme, which represents a 30% increase in funding compared with the current research and innovation programme and had boosted the budget for the Erasmus+ mobility programme to over €26 billion (US$31 billion), €12 billion more than the previous budget.

“You have stepped up to the challenge during the pandemic – from developing vaccines to engaging with our communities,” he said, adding: “Let’s all work together to build greener, more digital, more democratic and more equitable societies”.

The speech was broadly welcomed by keynote speakers at the opening session of the two-day EUA event, with Michael Murphy, EUA president and former rector of University College Cork, Ireland, saying it was “good that he joined us”, adding: “We were worried last year by the state of the union address by the president of the European Commission [Ursula von der Leyen] which hardly mentioned research and education.”

Murphy said this showed the need for higher education leaders to engage more with member states so that when heads of government come to Brussels to make decisions, they have already been influenced by rectors and universities.

More investment needed

He said the European Council president had picked up on most of the key points in the EUA’s new vision statement, but he would have liked him to address how member states and the European Council could do more to make universities successful through the European frameworks, the right funding and infrastructure and investment. “It was a good start for us to go back to the [European] Council on.”

Pam Fredman, president of the International Association of Universities (IAU) and a former rector of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, was pleased Michel had raised the important issues of academic freedom and the need for a multidisciplinary approach to global challenges but added that the green and digital agendas were only part of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

“Universities cannot just focus on one or two agendas,” she told delegates, adding: “Vaccines would not have been on the table so quickly unless we had had curiosity research.”

Universities Without Walls: A vision for 2030 was designed to support European universities in meeting the challenges of the next decade, which Murphy said could be “quite menacing”, with “societal polarisation, partly driven by misinformation through new media, but certainly destabilising democracies, and more geopolitical realignments that are taking place impacting on universities’ capacities to engage in global collaboration”.

The document is the “distillation of many expert views” and should not be seen as a crisis response to the pandemic, but as a guide to “how to do things better”, he said.

Academic freedom and autonomy

University autonomy and the importance of academic freedom are constant themes, as is the freedom to communicate new knowledge “based on accepted standards of academic ethics and integrity”.

The vision makes a strong call for universities to work together, not for harmonisation, but by “building a system that is united in its diversity”.

While calling for more investment and funding, the EUA document says: “European funding programmes are very important for European collaboration, but they must operate in addition to sufficient national funding.”

The vision statement also calls for more societal engagement on issues such as sustainable development, and wants to make it easier for academics to switch careers to work in industry, public administration or to launch start-up enterprises.

Civic engagement needs to be incentivised so that academics can feel comfortable taking part in evidence-based discussions.

Murphy told the EUA annual conference that the vision aims to ensure that “change in universities matches the pace of change in society” and said most European institutions shouldn’t find the goals too radical as most were already on this path.

Open is the key word

“The key word is ‘open’. No more ivory towers; blended campuses are here to stay, tradition combined with online,” he said.

Another key aim is to make graduates ‘robot-proof’ in the future and he predicted “more experiential learning in workplaces”.

“We see staff, too, moving through the walls; a lot more staff going out into business and going into civic society to reskill and make sure everything is up to date and experts from outside coming into the universities,” he said.

Fredman said a key challenge for the European vision was ensuring that it tackled inequality, included unequal access to the digital transformation. Not everyone can use the systems on offer and there was not just a digital divide between poor and rich countries, “but also within countries there is inequality in access”, she said.

Murphy also called on European leaders and the EU to “break down the bureaucratic barriers to cooperation”, saying the European Union “should take the lead in challenging those states that are most restricted and drive the agenda for a level playing field. That will be critical for the European Research Area, the European Education Area and for the [European] Universities Initiative currently sponsored by the [European] Commission.”

Nic Mitchell is a freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in European higher education. He runs De la Cour Communications and blogs at www.delacourcommunications.com.