Martin Procházka, the Rector of Palacký University in Olomouc and member of Aurora’s Board of Presidents, represented Aurora in an international meeting in Brussels, organised for the rectors of the 44 current European University Alliances and Mariya Gabriel, the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth. The agenda of the two-day working meeting included many discussion topics, in which the leaders of European universities focused mainly on moving forward the transformational potential of European university alliances, the European Strategy for higher education, the legal status of Alliances, European degrees, and micro-credentials.
Rector Procházka used his participation in this event to share Aurora’s state of play and best practices following the excellent mid-term review and Aurora’s priorities moving forward as part of the next bid that has been recently submitted. He also tabled the importance of fostering more cross-alliance cooperation as part of the EUN framework.
The panels and discussions with the Commissioner stressed the long-term importance of European University Alliances in both the eyes of the European Commission and the participating universities, with Commissioner Gabriel expressing the Commission’s commitment to European University Alliances until at least 2030. Looking back at the event, Commissioner Gabriel called European Universities “drivers for change” and sees continued support of these alliances as a strategic investment.[1]
“There are now nearly 44 alliances, with hundreds of universities organised within them. The debate was, of course, about how Europe will approach its in the future and what should be the long-term common strategy of our universities to compete with American or Asian universities. We also talked about whether, for example, in the future, one common diploma should be issued to graduates across the alliance universities, whether fifty percent of students and fifty percent of teachers should go to partner universities as part of mobility, etc.,” rector Martin Procházka described the course of the meeting, adding that another key topic was the possible further support of European university alliances, the financing of which by the European Commission is planned until 2029.
[1] Tweet Mariya Gabriel
