The European Universities initiative, currently piloted under Erasmus+ and supported through Horizon 2020 has created enormous dynamism across higher education sector to jointly create critical mass and implement institutional transformation strategies towards universities of the future, involving also surrounding ecosystems.

The European Universities will be drivers of a European Excellence Initiative in the future with a distinct widening module.

Through the European Excellence Initiative, Horizon Europe’s support aims at the transformation of higher education sector and their surrounding ecosystems, including non-university research centres. The Excellence Initiative would thereby mobilise local and regional government’s investments in higher education sector (in its broadest sense). It will also include research activities in strategically relevant domains with a centre of gravity in widening countries. The widening dimension and relevance will be closely monitored on the grounds of an overall distribution KPI.

Pending the evaluation of the European Universities pilot portfolio in 2021-2022, the European Excellence Initiative in 2021 will focus on capacity building for networks of higher education institutions and partners in the local ecosystem, with a view of preparing the networks towards the full roll-out of the European Universities initiative in the years to come as announced in the European Skills Agenda adopted by the Commission on 1 July 2020.

Further to its proposals adopted on 30 September 2020 for the new ERA for Research and Innovation and the European Education Area, supported by the Council in its Conclusions, the Commission will engage further with the sector towards developing a higher education transformation agenda.

Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Integrated and longer term cooperation between the partner higher education institutions (HEI) in the network, and with actors in surrounding ecosystems, jointly creating critical mass to contribute better to major societal challenges;
• Tangible progress towards institutional transformation / modernisation of HEI (in its broadest sense), including through pilots or study cases, with a particular emphasis on the entities located in widening countries;
• Strengthened cooperation with a view to raising excellence, global competitiveness, and general attractiveness for international talents and investments, including gender equality provisions; this includes preparations to embark onto the potential future European Universities initiative;
• Contribute to a portfolio of successful cooperation models for modernisation/ transformation at research and innovation level, in synergy with HEI’s education dimension; identify remaining barriers at regional/national/EU level hampering cooperation between HEI and modernisation of HEI; act as a regional role model of successful transformation;
• Facilitate future synergies between the European Education Area and the European Research Area, in particular in relation to the European Universities alliances.

 Scope:

The capacity building towards the European Excellence Initiative aims to significantly strengthening cooperation between at least two organisations from higher education sector in a Widening country (or different Widening countries), by linking it with at least two internationally-leading institutions from two different Member States or Associated Countries.

Officially opened from: 29.06.2021.
Deadline: 4.11.2021
Total budget: 30 M €
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