European universities: the pending connection
Europe today is a space where we share the same institutional and legislative umbrella, where we pay with the same currency, where we can travel without a passport and with a common health card, and where it is even possible to make calls without charges. However, Europe is still today a space where a bureaucratic and poorly coordinated labyrinth can prevent a student from complementing their studies with a stay abroad, a researcher from seeking new professional opportunities at the local, national, or European level, or several universities from jointly creating a cross-border academic program. In all these cases, the obstacle is the same: the lack of real interoperability in the European higher education system. This absurdity tests not only the most sophisticated digital skills, but also the most basic of virtues: patience.
Interoperability in European higher education is harder to pronounce than it is to understand. It refers to the capacity of systems, territories, institutions, and, ultimately, the citizens of the Old Continent to collaborate effectively at the university level. It is a shared experience, where knowledge—recognized today as the fifth freedom, along with the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital—reveals itself as the basis of our identity and the foundation of our wealth.
The process is not new and has a long history. The emerging university interoperability formally began in 1999 with the Bologna Process, which crystallized in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Today, 48 countries have made progress in harmonization through quality measurement and assurance systems, learning transfer, mutual recognition of qualifications, and the promotion of student and faculty mobility. Nothing has done more to raise European awareness among new generations than the Erasmus+ program. Since its creation in 1987, and despite bureaucratic difficulties and persistent inequalities, its commitment to free academic movement has benefited more than 15 million people. However, the results of the latest satisfaction survey promoted by the European University Association strongly recommend a systematic approach to simplifying and improving quality.
Today, we have other initiatives that are less well-known to the general public but are participating in the same effort, such as the European Digital Education Hub (EDEH), to promote digital educational innovation and the creation of a European interoperability framework, and the European Universities Alliances, to develop joint projects bringing together more than 500 universities from across the continent, practically half of them. All of this is aimed at the same goal: to have a common academic language that would allow, among other things, the use of European degrees and single academic records.
However, making progress still doesn't mean completing it. Today, the demands for interoperability must address a much more complex and urgent scenario of needs and opportunities, marked by the imperative to offer lifelong learning. Complex because we need to facilitate training pathways that are no longer linear, but rather discontinuous and multidisciplinary for groups with very diverse profiles, while also contributing to the mobilization of research talent that must combine efforts to address major European missions. And urgent because competitiveness requires combining financial or industrial capital with the capacity of people and organizations to adapt and innovate, as reflected in the recent position statement of the European Commission under the slogan "The union of skills".
That's why the call also challenges the Catalan university system, which can—and must—make a decisive contribution to this European goal. How? With its resilient and historic commitment to public education, with the power of its widely recognized research talent, with its active participation and leadership in European university alliances, and with its manifest desire to engage in the educational debate. The more we work, demand, and advocate to make our systems interoperable, the easier it will be to guarantee diversity and inclusion in quality higher education. Being more competitive must necessarily also mean being more fair and equitable. In this sense, the OpenEU alliance, led by the UOC in collaboration with the rest of Europe's online universities, shows us how to seize good opportunities to push Europe toward a reality where students, researchers, and institutions can broaden their horizons with minimal obstacles and maximum potential. Let's go!
