What should be captured with a European degree? The Guild’s response to the higher education package

The Guild welcomes the Commission’s focus on cross-border cooperation, through increased mobility and removal of regulatory obstacles. Ultimately, the European Education Area includes a vision for better teaching and learning. We also welcome the collaborative efforts that led to the publication of the package and look forward to further developing ideas on the European degree, Quality Assurance and Recognition System and attractive and sustainable careers in higher education.

In anticipation of Member States’ response to the package and its implementation, The Guild member universities highlight the following:

Transnational cooperation can develop in many ways – therefore, a new European degree must be part of this reflection, but not the only part. The key question moving forward will be the scale of the European degree uptake across the sector and its funding mechanisms.
The European degree should not focus on “critical technology areas” only. It should take advantage of a full range of disciplinary and pedagogical approaches, including social sciences, arts and humanities.
In efforts to reduce red tape in quality assurance, we should avoid adding new layers of administration which may increase complexity and require resourcing. At the same time, the sector also needs to reflect on self-imposed regulations.
Providing attractive careers in higher education will require support at the national and EU level by creating the necessary conditions and investment. For example, through field-specific prestigious grants for teaching and learning, or collaborative grants for teaching innovation.

Ole Petter Ottersen, Acting Secretary-General of The Guild: “The European degree agenda provides for a more seamless cooperation at the European level. But a more tightly knit European academic community should not detract from our global engagement but rather serve as a springboard for an even stronger engagement with global partners.”

Jo Angouri, Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Internationalisation at the University of Warwick: “The journey towards fully joint European degrees provides a chance to bring real value added for the sector by simplifying process and cutting red tape in QA frameworks. Promising programming is coming through European Universities alliances where different models, designs and activity types for connectedness have been successfully piloted. The challenge is to consolidate this work and embed micro-level programming to existing programme-level structures, as well as to create the conditions for fully fledged joint degrees. The European degree agenda offers a rare prospect to accomplish objectives beyond the reach of existing designs. We should not let this chance slip away.”

22 May 2024

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Published 22. May 2024 14:42 - Last modified 22. May 2024 14:42