Vanessa Debiais-Sainton, head of the Unit Higher Education of the European Commission

In years to come, we will come to view 2020 as a watershed, not only in how we live and work, but also in how we learn. While we know that there will be no return to the higher education of six months ago, we are not yet certain how the future – or even this academic year – will look.

While undoubtedly bringing us challenges, this disruptive change offers us opportunities to consider the transformation we would like to see in higher education. As we begin a new academic year, therefore, I would like to share the European Commission’s vision of higher education transformation and outline how we plan to achieve it.

First, the vision: the Commission’s vision is of an inclusive and excellent higher education sector, where teaching, research, innovation and service to society work in harmony, both to create a brighter future for their students, researchers and staff, and to find the solutions to global challenges, such as environmental sustainability, digital transformation and societal cohesion.

So how do we get there?

In the European Commission, we are taking a holistic look at higher education, which will apply the lessons learned from COVID-19, but also go further, to empower higher education transformation throughout Europe. We recognise that the higher education sector will play an essential role in recovery from the impact of COVID-19, as well as in achieving over-arching European and global priorities, such as the European Green Deal and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

In that regard, the European Commission has recently published its vision for achieving the European Education Area by 2025, which announces a number of initiatives to transform higher education, which we intend to co-create with the higher education and research communities. It has also published an updated Digital Education Action Plan, which will draw lessons from the COVID-19 experience, while also paving the way for European digital education.

To accelerate deeper cooperation amongst the 5,000 higher education institutions in Europe, we will bring forward proposals on quality assurance and a European degree. These will pave the way for more innovative mobility formats, including digital components.

We will also focus on lifelong learning. We need innovative, diversified options, including digital and blended learning. For this reason, we will develop a European approach to micro-credentials, which will support their wider use, portability and recognition.

Another key aspect of the transformation agenda concerns inclusion. Too many people do not participate in higher education for social, cultural or economic reasons, or due to insufficient support and guidance. We must ensure that the student body entering and graduating from higher education reflects the diversity of Europe’s populations.

The role models for our higher education transformation agenda are the 41 European Universities, consisting of over 280 higher education institutions and supported by Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020. They are developing new models of sustainable cooperation. They will bring together a new generation of Europeans, who are able to cooperate and work within different European and global cultures on the biggest societal challenges of our time, in different languages, and across borders, sectors and academic disciplines. To provide further support to this initiative, we will examine the feasibility of a European statute for allainces such as the European Universities.

While higher education is facing many challenges, we have a real opportunity to work together in sharing our visions for the future. I look forward to engaging with students, teachers, researchers and staff over the coming year as we co-create this higher education transformation agenda.