01.12.2025

European Universities alliances risk becoming pilots without pathways

Paper by university network The Guild analyzes the aims and achievements of the higher education initaitive

The Guild universities have published an Insight Paper about the European Universities initiative in order to show from an institutional perspective what is possible and realistic. The European Universities are a flagship initiative of the EU strategy for universities; they encompass 73 alliances with almost 650 higher education institutions from all across Europe. The paper by the Guild asks how universities themselves, particularly research-intensive institutions, have experienced the initiative. The Guild is a network comprising 22 leading research-intensive universities from across Europe, including the University of Tübingen. The partners aim to engage with policy makers, enhance public debate and collaborate with private and public institutions to save global problems.

In teaching, the area with the most sustained engagement within alliances, The Guild argues that the gap between intention and implementation remains large. The structural rigidities of national systems have so far proven more resilient than the collaborative momentum of alliances. However, the paper identifies that this very tension between structure and experimentation makes alliances valuable.

Although joint research activities can proceed without the regulatory structures within which joint teaching activities are embedded, they are more reliant on strong bonds between researchers. Unlike in teaching, where Erasmus+ filled a structural gap in transnational collaboration, research support for alliances was dwarfed by the funding ecosystem already available to researchers. In this context, the long-term sustainability of research collaboration requires a compelling narrative of what alliance-based research uniquely offers.

A closer analysis of alliances’ societal engagement revealed that third mission activities often operated through events rather than sustained relationships. Hackathons and living labs proliferated but too often functioned as one-off events. Alliances also faced a structural challenge: societal engagement is inherently local or regional, whereas alliances are transnational by design.

For alliances to succeed and be scalable, the initiatives they generate require institutional embedding. In other words, their sustainability depends less on increased EU funding than on regulatory reform. The alliances, in making visible the frictions and barriers in transnational collaboration, hold up a mirror to both universities and to public authorities, creating pressure for changing the cultures around and within universities.

In the paper, The Guild makes a number of recommendations to EU policymakers, national and regional authorities, and to universities:

• Ensure a key part of alliance funding remains focused on education and pedagogical innovation. Where alliances wish to invest in research or societal engagement, they should be free to do so, but not at the expense of education.
• Continue to support mobility and collaboration beyond the alliance framework. A healthy European Education Area requires both structured and unstructured collaboration.
• Facilitate alignment at European level on key administrative matters. This includes academic calendars, digital platforms, and student record systems. Sector bodies such as rectors’ conferences can play a central role in coordinating these discussions.
• Be strategic about engagement. Institutions should identify where alliance participation delivers genuine added value, and where the transactional costs outweigh the benefits. Not every innovation needs to be scaled; not every project must be retained.
• Support and reward participation. Without institutional incentives, participation risks becoming invisible or burdensome.

After an article by The Guild

Further information

Insight Paper “European Universities alliances: Pilots without pathways?”

Website of The Guild