The European Universities alliances are running ambitious programmes spanning from educational innovation to joint research, with some concrete results and achievements to date. As the latest European Commission’s report highlights, looking into the future, “the alliances now need to accelerate progress by mainstreaming and further deepening their activities, scaling up their opportunities and reinforcing their outreach, both within and outside the alliances” (see ACA Newsletter – Education Europe, February 2025). This will require support at all levels, with strong synergies and complementarities between EU, national, and regional settings. 

Against this background, the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA) and the Slovenian National Agency for European Community Programmes and International Mobility Programmes (CMEPIUS) are conducting a small-scale study on national-level support to the European Universities Initiative (EUI). This study aims to explore how  higher education institutions participating in the European Universities alliances can be (further) assisted in realising their ambitious efforts by National Agencies for Erasmus+ or other national funding agencies.  

As part of this study, two questionnaires have been developed and launched to collect feedback. We encourage you to fill out the respective questionnaire, if you are from either:  

1. National Agencies for Erasmus+ and other national funding agencies, targeting staff resposnible for overseeing, monitoring or supporting European Universities alliances. 
2. Higher education institutions participating in the European Universities alliances with EU funding or a Seal of Excellence, targeting strategic leadership overseeing the institution’s involvement in an alliance (i.e. Rectors, Vice Rectors and Heads of International Relations Offices); leadership overseeing the implementation of an alliance (i.e., Secretary General, Managing Director or similar); staff acting as local (institutional) coordinators or work package leads or co-leads of the alliance. 

The deadline to complete both questionnaires is 25 April 2025 EOB.  

A series of workshops involving national agencies and the alliances will be conducted in the second half of 2025 to collect qualitative feedback for the study. The final results of the study will be presented in autumn this year. Follow the related project page for updates. 

This study is complementary to the ongoing work of the LTA project “European University Alliances (EUI) as role models – Spreading innovative results to other higher education institutions”, run by the National Agencies for Erasmus+ in Austria (OeAD), Germany (DAAD), Hungary (Tempus Public Foundation), and Norway (HK dir).