Different perspectives on European alliances
Joanna Daaboul, Senior Lecturer at UTC, has been Director of International Relations since March 2022.
As coordinator of the alliance for UTC, Joanna is the leader of Workpackage 3 dedicated to teaching and co-leader of Workpackage 1 dedicated to the management of the alliance itself within SUNRISE. “Even though one Workpackage was focused on research while another was more on a collaboration with the socio-economic world, current alliances mainly concern the sharing of best practices and teaching and aim to create new international training courses, to promote the establishment of double degrees and joint degrees and to encourage the mobility of students, staff and research scientists,” she says.
In charge of Work Package 3, UTC-Compiegne was chosen naturally as the venue for this first summit, dedicated to educational innovation and international educational collaborations. Today, this innovation requires the involvement of all stakeholders, particularly those most directly concerned, namely students. “That is why this summit also focused on the hearing the “voice of students” by presenting the results of a questionnaire on mobility in which 2 000 students participated,” she says.
“Students also expressed their views through the LEAP competition, devoted to developing innovative international training programmes on issues of environmental, social and digital transitions. Each group, guided by a lecturer from one of the nine universities, includes students from partner universities. The result? Ten original training projects with an international and interdisciplinary focus on the challenges of this triple transition. After a vote by the consortium members, three projects were selected and we committed ourselves to studying their proposals in detail with a view to implementation,” says Joanna Daaboul.
The second set of stakeholders to be involved in the development of tomorrow’s training programmes are the Regions. SUNRISE brings together universities rooted in a territory with specific characteristics. “Among other things, we compared the economic development and industrial innovation strategies and the suitability (or otherwise) of each university’s academic offering to the needs of its Region. The aim is that if the local university cannot respond to a particular issue in its territory, another member of the alliance could compensate for this if necessary,’ explains Joanna Daaboul.
What are the alliance’s coming projects? “One of the first concerns lie in ecological and societal transitions. We are going to analyse our educational offering to determine whether it meets the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and, above all, to integrate the student projects selected during the LEAP competition, as we are committed,” she concludes.
Donatienne Hissard, Director General of Campus France, Nelly Fesseau, Director General of Erasmus+ France ‘Education-Training’, Kai-Uwe Sattler, Rector of the Technische Universität Ilmenau in Germany, and Sumit Sharma, a Master’s student at Ilmenau, share their impressions of European alliances, particularly SUNRISE.
What is the role of Erasmus+ in European alliances? “European university alliances are one of the objectives of the Erasmus+ programme, but it is the European Commission, through calls for projects, that approves the creation of such alliances,” says Nelly Fesseau.
Specifically, this entails … ? ”The Erasmus+ Executive Agency manages programmes that are considered innovative or particularly important for integration at European level. This is the case for European university alliances created to increase interaction between them with two major objectives: to promote student mobility and to strengthen research,” explains Nelly Fesseau.
These objectives require additional funding. “Erasmus+ funding is provided equally by the Commission and the Member States. Thus, nearly €1.6 million over three years is allocated to French institutions members of an alliance from the state budget,” emphasises Nelly Fesseau.
This raises the question of the sustainable funding of these alliances. Campus France is therefore piloting the Future4Alliances project, a structuring project involving 32 partners. What are its objectives? “Co-financed by Europe and partner countries, it invites ministries and alliance coordinators to reflect together on various aspects that are essential for the future of this initiative. One important aspect concerns the sustainable financing of these alliances, which currently depend mainly on Erasmus+ funds. The second relates to the continuation and expansion of joint programmes, in particular double or even triple degree projects and finally to the issue of the internationalisation of these alliances by integrating non-European partners,” explains Donatienne Hissard.
European alliances also aim to increase the attractiveness of higher education institutions in the EU, particularly for international students. “The fact that France is both centrally located in Europe and that its institutions are also at the heart of European cooperation and therefore alliances – it is the second country in terms of the number of institutions participating in these projects – is a major factor bolstering its attractiveness to international students. Within these alliances, institutions are creating new educational programmes and curricula in a multilingual, multicultural and multidisciplinary context that also respond to the major societal challenges facing the European Union, which are often the same as those encountered elsewhere in the world. This is a powerful attraction, with the possibility of multiple mobility options. This is the case with SUNRISE, one of the most recent alliances,” explains Donatienne Hissard.
What are SUNRISE’s strong features, compared to other alliances? “Firstly, we realise that the consortium partners are genuinely motivated to advance projects of common interest. We also have the advantage of size. We represent small universities with an agility that large structures do not have and where communication is very fluid, making decision-making easier,” says Kai-Uwe Sattler.
What are the expected benefits of such an alliance? “The partner universities are fairly similar in size and are located in regions with specific characteristics and needs. We can therefore learn from each other by sharing experiences and best practices. Like all alliances, SUNRISE promotes student mobility because it is very important for students to be exposed to other cultures and other higher education systems. Finally, such alliances contribute to the attractiveness of their member universities. International students may be attracted by the fact that, if they enrol at a SUNRISE university, they can complete part of their studies at a university in another country without any paperwork hassles,” emphasises Kai-Uwe Sattler.
It was this flexibility factor that motivated Sumit Sharma, an Indian student, to pursue a Master’s degree in computer engineering at TU Ilmenau. “This alliance model is very relevant for Europe as it allows for the sharing of resources and best practices in both training and teaching, stimulates research and increases student mobility, enabling students to get the best out of each country and, above all, strengthens the sense of European identity among young people. It is also positive for us international students, as we benefit from the same mobility,” he believes.
MSD
