This week the European Commission published three policy communications with direct relevance for universities: one on the European Education Area, one on the European Research Area and one on a Digital Education Action Plan. A policy report, Towards a 2030 Vision on the Future of Universities in Europe, is to be released shortly. Earlier this summer, the commission published an equally interesting communication on a new European Skills Agenda. Excellence, sovereignty and inclusion figure prominently in these texts. So how does mobility fit into this agenda in a post-pandemic world?
The COVID-19 recovery creates opportunities to align the European Union’s green, digital and knowledge agendas. In order for universities to become leaner, cleaner and better employers and for their staff to find a better work-life balance, we need to rethink mobility.
Mobility of students and staff is widely considered to have positive effects on the life and careers of the individuals concerned. It is part of the general EU objective of promoting the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital. Free movement is expected to allocate talent to the places where it is most productive to the benefit of all. Universities and research institutes will thus obtain the human resources they need to flourish.
EU programmes like Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe foster mobility. Millions of movements are proudly presented as European success stories. We educated generations of students not only as “European citizens” but also as greedy and polluting air travellers. Universities proudly contribute their research to tackle global challenges, such as climate change, but very few have limited the abundant academic travel (tourism) of their staff. The EU has launched its Green Deal, but ERASMUS and H2020 are far from being green.
Mobility may also cause brain drain. Objections against ‘brain drain’ are countered by the use of the more euphemistic notion of ‘brain circulation’. The reality is, however, that most talent movements are from the south to the north and from the east to the west, reinforcing successful regions and weakening the less successful ones.
From an efficiency standpoint this is may not be so bad. The concentration of talent in a few hubs strongly stimulates exchanges and innovation at those places. Investment capital flows and optimal use of expensive infrastructure can be assured. Famous examples are Silicon Valley and the Boston region.
In Europe, clustering and concentration are a definite trend as well, both within countries and across the continent. National excellence initiatives foster this trend. Their European counterparts, such as the European Institute for Technology (EIT) and the more recent European Universities Initiative, go in the opposite direction, with some clustering but no concentration. More alignment of national and European instruments would be welcome.
From a political and societal point of view, clustering and concentration contain certain risks. Lesser-developed regions will lose talent and become even less attractive for investment in knowledge-intensive sectors. Proximity services will become scarce. Popular resentment will grow and populist movements will gain traction, threatening the EU’s social and political cohesion.
Italy is a strong case in point, with low support for the EU and more to lose if we keep draining their best brains as populist parties warm up for the next elections.
Societal cohesion and economic development are theoretically better served by a broader spread of higher education and research facilities across countries and regions, but this, in turn, may not foster world-class excellence. How to square the circle? We see various ways in which to tackle this issue.
Online cooperation
The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated that online cooperation makes much physical mobility redundant. Communication tools are becoming more user-friendly and rooted in everyday practice. Teams cooperate, independent of location. The quality of life, health security and low rent in peripheral regions may start to outweigh long travel times, as is already happening at Google, for example, where home working has become the rule for all for the time being.
Universities in remote areas may cease to be peripheral and become attractive places to work. Universities in large cities could allow their staff to work from a distance or abroad to avoid expensive housing costs and removal, thus allowing couples to better combine their careers and family duties.
Physical mobility will continue to take place, but in a (re)considered way and no longer as an automatic assumption. Hybrid or blended study programmes and micro-credentials will allow for more flexibility and cater for a much larger clientele, including adult and returning learners. Larger portions of university budgets may be spent on teaching and learning and smaller ones on (often times empty) buildings, energy and travel.
This model requires investments in secure, high-speed network facilities in all regions, as foreseen in the EU Digital Strategy and Digital Education Action Plan that will serve local economies, SMEs and citizens overall.
Access to and sharing of infrastructure
A concentration of minds is unavoidable around large-scale physical research infrastructure, but investment in secure, high-speed network facilities will also enable remote online access of research groups to remote regions. New infrastructures could be located in so far underserved regions. All should be governed as European facilities.
“Governing the commons” can be realised using the full set of legal instruments that the EU has at its disposal for governing knowledge ecosystems, alliances and infrastructures, for instance, the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) and the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). We could thus align the EU’s green, digital and knowledge agendas.
Co-nominations of staff
University networks from various regions, central and peripheral, could decide to co-nominate staff who would take up mandates in education, research and innovation in two or more institutions, involving occasional mobility and lots of online cooperation.
Some of the selected European University alliances could test this model, installing joint tenure tracks using the EU Blue Card and collective pension solutions like RESAVER. Again this would need to be subject to changes in national rules such as on taxation.
Special zones for education, research and innovation
More generally, one could imagine the creation of ‘special zones’ for education, research and innovation in lesser-developed regions where universities and research institutes would operate under the wings of a European University alliance, for instance, as regards nominations of senior staff (local and international) based on open, transparent and merit-based recruitment.
Additional funding could come from the EU Recovery Fund that is supposed to focus on innovation and structural reforms.
European statute
Universities in the special zones could be subject to lighter sets of regulation as is the case for companies in Special Economic Zones. They could explore a ‘European Statute’ (for single institutions and alliances) as foreseen in the European Universities Initiative pilot and originally proposed by former Dutch Education Minster Jo Ritzen.
A European Statute and additional funding could also favour the emergence of more select groupings of elite institutions (national or cross-border) that would champion Europe’s sovereignty in the knowledge domain, very much like Airbus and the European Battery Alliance.
In our view, the EU ‘Knowledge Strategy’ (coined by Commissioner Gabriel in the European Parliament hearings in September 2019) should address both inclusion and excellence.
The future
So what should universities look like in 10 years from now? In our view, they should be strong, open and diverse. There is no one size that fits all. A world-class system is a diversified system that caters for a range of different needs for a large variety of stakeholders.
How do we get to that point? The key is through opening up and networking. We have acquired a competition mindset, but to build stronger institutions and systems we need more effective funding and collaboration across sectors and borders, in education and research and innovation. This should be the major strategic direction for the decade ahead.
Because let’s face the facts: Europe has kosome 30% of the world’s top 100 universities. However, the best ranked (top 50) are outside the EU – in the UK and Switzerland. Nevertheless, the Netherlands and Sweden are strong within the EU and Germany and France are rising.
We need to both lift all boats and create global winners. The logic of ‘global excellence’ has been based on the physical concentration of resources and capacity, but we don’t want to create ‘European champions’ at the expense of the strength of the system as a whole. We want to avoid brain drain and to work in line with the green and digital transformation so we need to strengthen online collaboration and build effective knowledge ecosystems.
What can the EU level do to realise that vision? It must:
• Gear multi-annual budget and recovery funds more towards creating a European Research Infrastructure;
• Roll out high-speed digital networks across the territory: for universities, local economies, citizens and SMEs;
• Use the full set of legal instruments that the EU has at its disposal for governing knowledge ecosystems, alliances and infrastructures;
• The EGTC should facilitate (trans)national and interregional co-operation;
• ERIC should establish and operate research infrastructures of European interest; and
• And a European University Statute could help to empower alliances and individual institutions in need of more autonomy.
