Are more sustainable funding systems for European Universities possible?

The Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture of the European Commission has published a recent study on the state and effectiveness of national funding systems of higher education to support the European University Alliances.

The need for this study emerges from the observation that the full costs of the activities undertaken by the Alliances from their establishment in 2019 are exceeding the combined support from EU and national sources, the difference being covered by these universities’ own resources. According to the authors, “the situation illustrates the importance HEIs attach to their European Universities and their expectations to generate added value through this transnational collaboration”.

But, how can synergies between EU and national/regional funding mechanisms work in a more effective way to maximize the impact of EU funding to support European University Alliances? How is this European and national cooperation in funding related to the recent piloting of new instruments to implement a possible legal status for Alliances?

The report analyses the implementation of Performance-Based Funding (PBF) systems in the 27 EU Member States and evaluates their impact. It seeks to understand how and to what extent national (PBF) funding schemes can be used to support transnational University Alliances, as initiated under the European Commission’s European Universities Initiative in 2019.

The study offers recommendations to policy-makers on how to best use performance-based agreements that together with the gradual removal of national regulation-related obstacles and the diversification of the revenue sources of these Alliances could lead to more sustainable funding models in the medium-long term.

The report can be downloaded here.