Work

Strengthening Europe from the ground up? Students’ perspectives on the European Universities Initiative

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: European higher education has long served as a key component for advancing Europeanisation, most recognisably through initiatives like Erasmus, the Bologna Process, and the creation of the European Higher Education Area. The European Universities Initiative (EUI), launched in 2019, builds on this trajectory by fostering transnational alliances of universities across Europe to deepen international cooperation in education, research, and innovation. While previous scholarship on the EUI has examined the contested understandings of its scope and purpose among policy stakeholders, this study explores the perspectives of students engaged in EUI alliances. Informed by conceptual work on spatial imaginaries and space as produced through everyday social practices, the article examines how students variously perceive and enact the Initiative’s aims through their engagement with their alliances. We draw on focus group data with students across three of the now 65 alliances, finding considerably diverse interpretations of the EUI, its impact, and its impediments, reflecting broader tensions around its role in consolidating a European higher education space. By centring student voices, this study contributes to understanding specifically how the EUI furthers European cooperation in higher education and how Europeanisation is experienced from below.

Source: International Journal of Educational Research

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijer.2025.102710

Authors: Rachel Brooks, Lee Rensimer

Institutions: University of Oxford, University College London

Language: English

Topic: Higher Education Governance and Development

Subfield: Political Science and International Relations

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,470