Interoperability is key to transforming Europe’s universities

Students could access courses and modules from theoretically all of Europe’s universities within the next decade if the upscaling of ‘interoperability’ happens between and beyond the existing European Alliances of higher education institutions, suggests a new discussion paper from the European University Association (EUA).

That’s the most radical of the three main options presented in the EUA report titled Developing Common Learning Opportunities Through Interoperability: The status and outlook for European higher education, published on Monday 18 November 2024.

So far, 64 alliances of universities under the European Universities Initiative have been created in a European Union drive to develop a genuinely European dimension in the higher education sector.

They represent more than 560 higher education institutions of all types across 35 countries, including all the EU member states as well as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Montenegro, the Republic of North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Türkiye, as University World News has reported.

Some students are able to benefit from what is essentially a wider and more flexible form of joint degree programmes already, but they can only do so within existing alliance member institutions, which often comprise around 10 universities in different European countries.

The EUA paper suggests that this is just the first step on the road to “greater interoperability”.

What is ‘interoperability’?

According to the EUA: “interoperability refers to the ability for partner universities to seamlessly and securely share data across institutional and national boundaries”.

In the discussion paper, it stated in a note accompanying the report: “EUA explores interoperability’s potential to transform cooperation within and beyond the European Universities Alliances.

“By allowing diverse systems to talk to each other and share information efficiently, there is the potential among networks of institutions to develop – and expand access to – common learning opportunities.”

Progress and challenges “are especially apparent within European Universities Alliances, where the ambition to establish virtual campuses and scale up mobility have generated impetus in moving towards interoperable systems”, said the EUA.

The report presents the experiences of practitioners in EUA member universities and explores some of the obstacles

Why stop at alliances?

One of the paper’s authors, Thomas Jørgensen, the EUA’s director of policy coordination and foresight, told University World News that what has been achieved since the Erasmus+ European Universities Initiative was launched in 2019 is impressive.

But he asked whether the current system should be developed further than the limited “add-on to programmes anchored within one institution”.

Why not encourage alliances to develop common course catalogues so they can offer modules co-created by alliance partners or programmes assembled from a collection of high-quality modules, each one already delivered at one of the partner institutions?

Jørgensen said: “This would draw on the strengths of the individual institutions to build cohesive programmes delivered between them, free up capacity and eliminate the need for comparable programmes to run in multiple partner institutions.”

He believes this would put learners at the centre of the process, who would then be able to pick and choose their own combination of what to study and at what university and move to different universities across the continent for different periods of time during their studies.

Why stop at the alliances? Why not have alliances of the alliances or even go beyond the current alliances so that students could have access to courses and modules from theoretically any of Europe’s universities? These are questions he asked.

Jørgensen was keen to stress that he is not advocating one model over another. The paper he co-authored with EUA colleagues Clare Phelan and Liliya Kukuraza is simply asking questions in the hope of generating wider debate.

Upscaling beyond the alliances could cause major disruption to European higher education as a whole, he said, going beyond overcoming technical challenges and obstacles currently facing the Alliances, such as combining timetables and meeting the demands of different national data collection requirements.

The EUA paper suggests that interoperability “holds the promise of seamless systems where learners, teachers, and professional staff can smoothly work across institutions, sharing data and processes from logging in to providing diplomas and credentials”.

Quality assurance

Among the big questions to be resolved is what to do about quality assurance and how to regulate which higher education institutions are able to offer modules and courses in such a grand scheme of cross-border collaboration.

Jørgensen said that one obvious body is the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR), which already provides European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) and has an official register of quality assurance agencies that substantially comply with the ESG framework.

A problem is that some national higher education systems have opted in-and-out of fulfilling all the European guidelines, including England (unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). England is only partially aligned with the ESG for its higher education quality assurance at the moment.

Italy is also only partially aligned with the ESG and Serbia has a quality assurance system in place but has not yet been aligned with the ESG.

Having left the Erasmus+ programme after Brexit, British universities are only able to join the European University Alliances if they pay their way and don’t draw on the EU’s Erasmus+ funds.

The UK’s Open University is a member of the OpenEU alliance coordinated by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Spain but is only able to be an associate partner.

Warm welcome

Despite the challenges, the EUA paper on interoperability has already received a warm welcome.

Olga Wessels, head of the Brussels office of the European Consortium of Innovative Universities, which is coordinating a joint ‘community of practice’ for the European universities project for the European Commission – FOR-EU4All – told University World News:

“If we want to progress our commitments to the European Higher Education Area and the Bologna Process, we need to take forward a ‘make it work’ mentality recommended in the new EUA report.”

She welcomed the report’s attention to flexible learning pathways that are needed to develop “work on full European degrees”.

She noted: “Now, we need to go beyond individual alliances, and that’s why I am so excited about the start of FOR-EU4All, bringing all alliances and the EUA and higher education sector representatives together on topics like interoperability.”

Wessels said that she could not overstate its relevance to making progress on the European Higher Education Area and Bologna Process commitments and welcomed the inclusion of flexible learning pathways and their relevance beyond the alliances.

Sophia Karner, senior policy officer at Una Europa, an alliance of 11 European research-intensive universities, said she “particularly appreciated the point that technical decisions must go hand in hand with strategic discussions at policy level”.

Jørgensen responded by saying: “The ‘make it work’ mentality was really important and a positive experience, but it only gets us so far, basically to the first level in the future scenarios – the real question is if we need or want to go further?”

He told University World News: “Interoperability is not so much a mere discussion of technical or management aspects but rather a potentially transformative development that touches upon the visions for the European higher education system as a whole.

“We hope our paper starts a much larger discussion about the digital transformation of higher education and society at large.”

Nic Mitchell is a UK-based freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in European and international higher education. He blogs at www.delacourcommunications.com