The roadmap includes objectives, recommendations and actions that Aalto and the other universities of the alliance can promote to make Unite! a European driver of open science and innovation by 2023.
With the expansion from seven to nine members, Unite! University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering increases its impact on the European Higher Education Area.
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Andrew Gunn
reflects on the first few years of the initiative and assesses how it might help shape the future of European higher education.
The idea of a European University is as old as Europe’s political union itself. A supranational university was first mooted in 1948, and various proposals were discussed amongst the founding members in the early years of the European Community. However, none of these proposals came to fruition, owing to a lack of consensus amongst member states over what form it should take.
These discussions identify what would be an enduring fault line running through the European political project: is it about economics and trade or culture and social solidarity, or both? And where does higher education fit into both of these differing rationales?
How to succeed in the European Universities Initiative
The European Union has published European Universities Factsheets giving comparative information on the 41 European Universities Initiative (EUI) alliances currently in operation and making themselves ready for the mid-term review of the EUI later in 2021.
At the call of the two first rounds of the EUI it was explicitly stated by the EU Commission that the selected alliances are to serve as role models for “the path towards the EHEA [European Higher Education Area]”, and therefore it is of great interest for potential applicants and others to hear how these alliances have started operating their projects.