INVEST Euro­pean Univer­sity – why it is needed and what it is all about?

Erasmus+ Euro­pean Univer­si­ties is a flag­ship programme devel­op­ing higher educa­tion in a more ambi­tious and holis­tic manner than ever seen before. The programme sets goals high: the alliances are expected to reshape the higher educa­tion programmes to meet the ideal of the Euro­pean degree, create a completely new kind of phys­i­cal and virtual inter-Euro­pean campus enabling students and staff to work, learn and do research together, and build research, devel­op­ment and inno­va­tion (RDI) commu­ni­ties that can miti­gate Euro­pean chal­lenges and promote sustain­abil­ity (Euro­pean Univer­si­ties Initiative).

Thus, the alliances are to both contribute to the Euro­pean Educa­tion Area follow­ing the conclu­sions of the Euro­pean Commis­sion (EC), and to imple­ment the aims of the Euro­pean Research Area in their RDI, creat­ing applic­a­ble show­cases that any other higher educa­tion insti­tute can benefit from. Fortu­nately, the EC acknowl­edges that the chal­lenges and ambi­tions set for the alliances do take time, and has set a programme frame­work that offers three funding calls with 3 + 4 + 2-year oppor­tu­ni­ties for each alliance. When success­ful, proceed­ing with the alliance’s specific aims and objec­tives, and showing concrete results, the funding may even cover a period of nine years, provid­ing a remark­able oppor­tu­nity to make a real change (Conclu­sions on Euro­pean Univer­si­ties 2021; Euro­pean Univer­si­ties Initiative).

Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences has been part of the INVEST Euro­pean Univer­sity alliance since 2020 and is close to the end of the first period of funding and revis­ing strat­egy for INVEST 2.0 to be ready for the coming call. What is this all about and why are we involved? This article provides a brief overview reflect­ing INVEST’s key objec­tives and work­plan,
and discusses the added value of the Euro­pean Univer­si­ties programme.

Intro­duc­tion

INVEST, the Inno­va­tions of Regional Sustain­abil­ity Euro­pean Univer­sity Alliance, is a consor­tium of five pioneer­ing univer­si­ties: Slovak Univer­sity of Agri­cul­ture in Nitra (SUA, Slova­kia, coor­di­na­tor), Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences (Karelia, Finland), Univer­sity of Agribusi­ness and Rural Devel­op­ment (UARD, Bulgaria), Univer­sity of Thes­saly (UTH, Greece), and Van Hall Laren­stein Univer­sity of Applied Sciences (VHL, the Netherlands). 

The coor­di­na­tor envis­aged the Euro­pean Univer­sity programme to meet its strate­gic inter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion goals and started to build a group of part­ners with similar inter­ests to join the consor­tia. To be even stronger during the next programme stage, INVEST plans to extend the group of part­ners up to seven or eight for the coming 2023 call. For Karelia, the INVEST part­ner­ship was a perfect match from the first request: the key areas resonated beau­ti­fully with the Karelia2030 strat­egy goals of promot­ing inter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of educa­tion, boost­ing inter­na­tional RDI and provid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for inter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion for all. INVEST was funded in 2020 and ranked high, with 90 points. 

Follow­ing the vision, INVEST enhances the sustain­abil­ity and inclu­sive­ness of the partner regions, promotes inno­va­tion in the educa­tion system and research methods, and invests in students to become active citi­zens and future shaping profes­sion­als for a more sustain­able Europe. The alliance has four strate­gic pillars: (1) Compet­i­tive educa­tion and valu­able learn­ing outcomes, (2) collec­tive excel­lent research and inno­va­tion, (3) high mobil­ity levels beyond Europe, and (4) network­ing as the plat­form for future educa­tion and research, cover­ing the three main focus areas – the Water, Energy Food and Envi­ron­ment Nexus, Quality of Life and Entrepreneurship.

It is quite an ambi­tious, some­what abstract and high-reach­ing vision, isn’t it? Yet it isstill achiev­able in time when consid­ered from the objec­tives and action plan perspectives.

INVEST objec­tives and action plan

To turn the vision into living reality, INVEST has six key objec­tives to work with. The key oper­a­tional areas are related to the main chal­lenges that have to be resolved to be able to meet the Euro­pean Educa­tion Area aims. Thus, the INVEST objec­tives are: defi­n­i­tion of joint gover­nance of partner univer­si­ties; iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of tools for miti­gat­ing chal­lenges in joint degree accred­i­ta­tion; systemic joint degree curricu­lum and imple­men­ta­tion programme and facil­i­ta­tion of other non-degree learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties; joint promo­tion and facil­i­ta­tion of student and staff mobil­ity in phys­i­cal, virtual and hybrid forms; elab­o­ra­tion of joint, research-inten­sive, but work-rele­vant peda­gogy; and, finally, living lab estab­lish­ment or/and shared oper­a­tional living lab working rules into all partner regions to serve the needs of educa­tion and joint research, devel­op­ment and inno­va­tion actions (see Table 1).

Table 1. INVEST key objec­tives (INVEST project proposal, 2020, 11) 

Theme of the objec­tive	Descrip­tion
(1) Gover­nance Struc­ture	Creation of demo­c­ra­tic gover­nance struc­ture in which managers, staff and students deter­mine together in close consul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers the content and future of INVEST.
(2) Joint Euro­pean Accred­i­ta­tion System	Devel­op­ment of a joint INVEST Accred­i­ta­tion Frame­work for degree courses (BSc, MSc and PhD) to over­come the differ­ences between the differ­ent accred­i­ta­tion systems.
(3) Joint Degree Programmes	Devel­op­ment of joint Euro­pean degrees, and creation of links from voca­tional train­ing to higher educa­tion. Demand-driven, partic­i­pa­tory applied research projects conducted in so-called living labs and results from other current scien­tific research will be an inte­gral part of the educa­tional programmes that will be devel­oped. Auto­matic recog­ni­tion of study credits by the home univer­sity is another goal for the use of this tool.
(4) Mobil­ity of Staff and Students	Foresee the imple­men­ta­tion of phys­i­cal, virtual and hybrid mobil­ity, where students from BSc, MSc, PhD life­long learn­ing programmes, and staff can move to/stay at another univer­sity to study, teach, do research, work, or share services and expe­ri­ences, in the spirit of the joint Euro­pean educa­tion policy. Mobil­i­ties will be facil­i­tated through INVEST Virtual Campus. Mobil­ity will also be strength­ened through partic­i­pa­tion in winter and summer schools.
(5) Joint Vision on Educa­tion and Peda­gogy	Design and imple­men­ta­tion of new, appro­pri­ate, inno­v­a­tive teach­ing, learn­ing and learn­ing strate­gies. Estab­lish­ment of joint educa­tional prin­ci­ples that will be incor­po­rated in the new peda­gogy, includ­ing multi­dis­ci­pli­nary approaches, chal­lenge-, compe­tence- and work-based methods, and the foster­ing of trans­ver­sal compe­tences. ICT-related learn­ing and eval­u­a­tion methods will be applied.
(6) Living Labs	A living lab and work rules will be estab­lished at each of the partner universities.

All these key objec­tives are elab­o­rated into living prac­tices within the INVEST work­plan relying on co-creation prac­tices. However, meeting the objec­tives to their full extent is not possi­ble during the first stage of the funding, which covers the three years from October 2020 to Septem­ber 2023. All the key oper­a­tional areas are highly demand­ing to work in, not only due to national differ­ences in educa­tion policy, degree award­ing and funding models, but also as they call for profound and holis­tic joint under­stand­ing, and commit­ment and involve­ment of the partner univer­si­ties. Conse­quently, the first three years are needed to create the pilot models and tools on which to build further achievements. 

The INVEST work­plan includes five work pack­ages, each coor­di­nated by one of the INVEST part­ners (see Figure 1 below, which shows the work pack­ages, their coor­di­na­tors and key work contents). Work Package 1 is coor­di­nated by SUA and it facil­i­tates the whole INVEST devel­op­ment process and inter­nal commu­ni­ca­tion between the consor­tium members, moni­tors the budget and looks after report­ing.  Work Package 2 is coor­di­nated by UARD and elab­o­rates the gover­nance model and tools for the alliance to work as one entity in the future. Work Package 3 is coor­di­nated by VHL and is devoted to curricu­lum devel­op­ment and living lab estab­lish­ment. Work Package 4 is coor­di­nated by Karelia and elab­o­rates tools for INVEST degrees and joint services, visu­alises mobil­ity oppor­tu­ni­ties, creates the entre­pre­neur­ship pathway and builds a process for staff capac­ity build­ing. Finally, Work Package 5 coor­di­nated by UTH builds the virtual tools for the alliance and promotes joint educa­tion policy contribution. 

As a whole, INVEST is a becom­ing a joint learn­ing organ­i­sa­tion that system­at­i­cally works for the comple­tion of its work­plan to meet the vision and facil­i­tates learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for each staff member to enable the trans­for­ma­tion in time. The co-creation process is a highly demand­ing process that is some­times full of stress due to concerns about all the tasks and differ­ent view­points, while at other times full of joy and happi­ness over achieve­ments and consen­sus. However, it is all a big invest­ment for a better future.

Discus­sion: Why is the Euro­pean Univer­si­ties programme necessary?

One might ask why we need the Euro­pean Univer­si­ties programme, includ­ing INVEST, with its ambi­tious goals, and how come the objec­tives have not been met thus far with other tools avail­able? What is the added value that these chal­leng­ing and resource-demand­ing enti­ties bring to higher educa­tion? Why did the Euro­pean Commis­sion fund 41 working alliances until now and is plan­ning to expand up to 60 by 2025?

First, to elab­o­rate on why, one could state that the Euro­pean Univer­si­ties programme enables a holis­tic approach to reshap­ing higher educa­tion in a completely new manner. The Erasmus programme, with its differ­ent key actions and calls, offers us a great variety of tools that are widely used. However, Euro­pean Univer­si­ties is the first Erasmus programme ever that enables profound strate­gic devel­op­ment actions within one entity, bridg­ing educa­tion, mobil­ity, RDI, plat­forms and services, HR devel­op­ment and strate­gic lead­er­ship into one devel­op­ment process in a way the other programme tools haven’t enabled before. The Euro­pean Univer­sity initia­tive is ambi­tious, demand­ing and some­times diffi­cult, and requires a suffi­ciently long time­line. There­fore, the three-call appli­ca­tion oppor­tu­nity for each funded or to-be-funded alliance is defi­nitely needed.

What is also worth noting is that the Euro­pean Univer­si­ties programme fosters solid higher educa­tion manage­ment and gover­nance involve­ment that is really needed to make the turn. It is obvious that univer­si­ties and univer­si­ties of applied sciences do not change if senior manage­ment does not support the change profoundly, no matter how inno­v­a­tive, skilful and ambi­tious the staff and their actions are. Real change calls for strong joint vision, commit­ment and involve­ment of higher educa­tion leaders. This approach is embed­ded into the programme as one of its key elements.

Finally, the Euro­pean Univer­si­ties programme links Erasmus with the Horizon programme in a new way we haven’t expe­ri­enced in other Erasmus tools. It also system­at­i­cally links HEIs with their regional ecosys­tems that promote applied RDI inten­sity and busi­ness devel­op­ment. In addi­tion, the support­ive capac­ity-build­ing tools for the alliances offered by Horizon enable Euro­pean Univer­si­ties to increase its joint Horizon involve­ment and contribute to the Euro­pean chal­lenges. The support­ive tools promote the rescal­ing of compe­tences and working with joint RDI strate­gies more deeply. This also fosters the less expe­ri­enced Horizon actors to become more involved in time, again meeting the needs of the Euro­pean Research Area. The RDI inten­sity strength­ens system­atic co-creation between the acad­e­mic and applied univer­si­ties and their working life part­ners, thus support­ing the rele­vance of higher education.

To summarise, the holis­tic nature of the programme, the strong programme-embed­ded involve­ment of the leaders, and direct inte­gra­tion links with the Horizon programme enable the Euro­pean Univer­si­ties programme to create the added value we all need and will benefit from. This programme enables show­case devel­op­ment and work with Euro­pean educa­tion policy, address­ing educa­tional chal­lenges and poten­tial. By devel­op­ing good prac­tices, testing models and address­ing impor­tant ques­tions to be solved, the alliances can ensure bene­fits for all. That is why the added value of the Euro­pean Univer­si­ties programme is obvious. And INVEST does its best to meet expectations.

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Author:

Liisa Timonen, Head of Inter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion, Karelia Univer­sity of Applied Sciences

Refer­ences:

Conclu­sions on Euro­pean Univer­si­ties. 2021. EC General Secre­tariat of the Council. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/49659/st08658-en21.pdf 3.10.2022.

Euro­pean Univer­si­ties initia­tive. https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/highereducation/european-universities-initiative 29.9.2022.

INVEST project proposal. 2020. Erasmus+ Euro­pean Univer­si­ties call 2020. INVEST Consortium.