Publication over the Erasmus+ programme by a famous euroexpert

With the assistance of Prof. Dr. Magdalena Ivanova - the first head of the Socrates and Erasmus programmes in Bulgaria, Burgas Free University shares the material presented on 30 September 2025, by Peter van der Hijden entitled „Erasmus+ : Could Europe achieve higher impact with a lighter touch?“

On 16 July 2025, the European Commission has published its proposal for a regulation establishing the Erasmus+ programme for the period 2028-2034. A sober text to be negotiated with the EU Council and Parliament in the coming two years. The scope of intervention of the programme is twofold: learning opportunities for all and capacity building support among organisations and for policy development. The devil will be in the more detailed work programmes and calls. I interpret the underlying programme objectives as ‘more effective education’ and ‘increased interoperability’ within and across national systems.

Programme effectiveness is also a concern of the Commission. The proposal states that Erasmus+ should ‘refine the focus of its cooperation activities, including by reviewing funding models, raising the relevance of target groups involved and better focus on increasing capacity building and raising quality’.

I present a few suggestions in this article to increase programme effectiveness and raise impact faster for wider audiences. I plead for an approach that is theme-focussed, actor-driven and output-based, with lighter-touch interventions building on decades of Erasmus experience. I start with the flagship dossiers European Universities, European degree labels and micro-credentials and end with  three crucial technicalities.

Let European Universities be overtly thematic

The challenge of institution-wide cooperation

In its resolution of 11 September 2025,  full of important messages, the European Parliament has sung the praises of European university alliances without noticing that the concept of institution-wide cooperation, involving six to nine universities, is near unachievable, if not impossible, to achieve.

The difficulty is explained by the wide variety of programs offered by universities and, consequently, the large number of researchers, professors, and other staff involved. It is also explained by the low overlap in thematic areas among the alliance partners.

It seems highly improbable that an entire corps of teachers and researchers of one university, whose work is highly dependent on all kinds of (external) developments, would find their ideal suitable counterparts, also lasting for a longer period of time, within a combination of a limited number of pre-defined often unequal institutions.

Many interesting activities are being carried out with great enthusiasm, but the basic objectives (joint campus, revision of study programmes, some integration of services) have not been reached on any meaningful scale and are unlikely to  be reached in the foreseeable future.

The fact that most teachers and researchers cannot find suitable counterparts within the partnership  was  acknowledged in the January 2025 Commission Report on the potential and outcomes of the initiative (pp. 107-108). The bulk of academic cooperation and student mobility will therefore remain outside the alliances.

Thematic alliances as natural alternatives

It would be more natural and pragmatic to give up the claim of institution-wide cooperation and allow European Universities to be overtly thematic, as some do already. In the past this was the case for Erasmus Interuniversity Cooperation Programmes (ICPs) and Erasmus Thematic Networks and more recent in the region-oriented Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVE).

In this logic, the chosen theme of a European University could be disciplinary, inter-disciplinary or horizontal (such as global citizenship). The thematic approach would bring focus, depth and scale to the cooperation. It would facilitate content innovation and collaboration with industry in strategic sectors of European interest (e.g. joint study programmes, work placements, dual careers, infrastructure sharing, applied and fundamental research). Academics would feel ownership.

Thematic alliances could consist of an inner circle of more active members (say 30) and various outer circles sharing and contributing. Universities could join several alliances in parallel as in Olympic circles. Third-country institutions would be welcome too, fostering international cooperation and benchmarking. The number of end-users benefitting and the impact on their life and career would be incomparably higher than is possible under the current, rather restrictive, institution-wide cooperation format.

The European Degree - from dream to reality

The harmonisation challenge

The Joint Study Programmes are back! They were the predecessors of the Erasmus programme way back in the eighties. In the new Erasmus+ proposal, they stand for a well-calibrated combined learning offer that, according to the European Commission, one day should lead to a new degree in national law books, jointly issued by different institutions. Member states are hesitant, but have agreed on a joint European degree ‘label’ as a first step.

A lofty goal, but jointly issued European degrees are also near unachievable, due to a series of significant, almost unsurmountable, barriers identified in the March 2024 Commission Staff Document (pp. 62-70). The document lists barriers in the field of accreditation and quality assurance, programme and curricula structure, governance structure, student enrolment and admission. 25 years of Bologna process and 20 years of Erasmus Mundus did not solve those issues. After all these years, only a few dozen degrees exist that are really jointly issued and delivered by all partners, and they cater for very few students.

A lighter-touch solution: European labels for study programmes with collaborative double or multiple pathways (Erasmus+)

Accordingly, it seems about time to pragmatically consider a lighter-touch alternative. We have it at our hands. It is called Erasmus+, the programme under which 400.000 students a year spent a substantial part of their studies abroad. They follow study-paths, that, in content and organisation, are comparable to the envisaged joint study programmes, be it with a lighter touch.

Partner universities involved recognise each other’s quality, learning outcomes and credits in learning agreements (legal instruments), often focussing on electives. The resulting degrees are formally institutional or national, but materially European. This is quite an achievement in terms of jointness de facto and de jure, something to be proud of and build upon without much ado.

Let’s therefore count our blessings and festively award the European label to all types of collaborative programmes, thousands of them, without specifying further conditions in terms of governance format or coordination.

All degrees in Europe have the right to be recognised

The overwhelming majority of them are institutional or national. They are delivered by enthusiastic staff and all the better if they have a European dimension. Universities are, of course, free to impose more stringent rules on their departments, and grant givers, e.g. Erasmus Mundus, may have their own special wishes, but we must bear in mind that the maximalist approach to integration is hardly replicable and definitely not scalable.

The envisaged next step, a new legally established European degree, is not necessary to make collaborative programmes visible to the world and appreciated by employers. The label, some marketing and a synchronised diploma supplement can do the trick. Nor is there a need to re-evaluate joint study programmes largely composed of parts provided by institutions already accredited by EQAR-registered agencies (once-only principle). More effective education and functioning interoperability are what matters for students, staff, and HEIs.

Unlock degree modules as micro-credentials

Micro-credentials are the ultimate lighter-touch tool. They fill an important gap opening up higher education landscapes and labour markets, that were until recently dominated by degree monopolies, effectively blocking peoples’ careers and personal development. All university modules today already enjoy learning outcomes, credits, level, quality assurance, stackability and certification (verifiable authenticity), which are prerequisites for micro-credentials according to the EU definition. Appropriately, introducing micro-credentials should be relatively easy.

The Erasmus+ transcript of records certifies module-acquired competences for returning mobile students close to 3 million times a year. Not all degree modules will immediately be accessible to students from other programmes at home or elsewhere, let alone to non-degree students. But they can be unlocked, step-by-step, by volunteering institutions, that, for this, deserve generous output-based support at national and European level. Private sector provision is growing as well, so competition and state aid issues with the public sector need to be addressed urgently.

Universities also produce, and monetise, micro-credentials outside degree programmes for personal or professional development. They can issue micro-credential certificates to individuals who have not followed a course but are able to demonstrate, by a test or a portfolio assessment, learning outcomes acquired elsewhere, through prior learning, or through work or life experience. This validating role, an academic prerogative, can open up a whole new area of university activity with high recruitment and resource potential.

In 2022, the EU Council of Education and Employment Ministers adopted two recommendations, promoting micro-credentials in combination with ‘Individual Learning Accounts’, to help co-finance the take-up. A pragmatic approach to accessibility, connecting offer and demand in lifelong learning across sectoral silos, building on what already exists.  Their roll-out could become the real game changer in view of establishing ‘learning opportunities for all’.

Fund outputs rather than governance formats

Also, for funding, there seem to be strong arguments to look for a lighter touch that is theme-focussed, actor-driven and output-based:

Well-chosen and well-described outputs

EU grant support could be geared towards high leverage outputs in priority areas. Outputs that would serve larger swaths of target populations more directly, rather than focussing on complex governance formats that tend to marginalise academics, as seen with European Universities. The choice of priority areas and outputs could be made subject to public debate. I would plead for outputs that foster more effective education (e.g. benchmarking and improving study programmes in strategic sectors) and increased interoperability (e.g. all-in digital course catalogues, based on shared EC-supported specifications.

Clear units of measurement

Credible outputs need good content descriptions. They also need units of measurement based on clearly formulated criteria as regards activity, scope, period, quality and impact. Applicants could then sign up to calls by presenting their own baselines and targets for the outputs listed. For instance, the number of planned European labels. The system can be automated to a large extent, reducing the need for lengthy grant applications and reviews.

Ex-post grants

For comparable activities, funding upfront could gradually be replaced by generous ex-post grants for outputs delivered (e.g. per European label) except for newcomers who may still need seed money. Overheads paid should benefit output actors more directly e.g. the teachers involved. Grants could decrease when certain thresholds are reached (e.g. for subsequent batches of European labels) favouring the entrance of newer and smaller applicants.

Digitalise higher education standards to increase system interoperability

The Erasmus programme not only boosted student mobility and collaboration of academics. In four decades, the programme also helped to develop new standards, reference frameworks and tools e.g. ECTS, EQF and EQAR that are now generally accepted as ‘European public goods’, surpassing their EU and EHEA policy umbrellas. Further digitalisation of these public goods, using artificial intelligence, could substantially increase the interoperability of systems and foster student agency, for instance through the spread of user-friendly student registration- and course comparison apps. The 2025 ‘Manifesto’ for a European higher education interoperability framework points us in the right direction.

Publish Institutional Recognition Records (IRR)

While we are at it, we should ask our universities to publish their Institutional Recognition Records, or IRR, online as suggested in the 2024 EU Council Recommendation ‘Europe on the Move’. Recognition records keep track of earlier recognition decisions regarding degrees and modules or micro-credentials from partners and third parties. Their publication, by the universities in charge, would introduce the notion of recognition ‘predictability’ at programme level, specifying - case by case - the more general and less informative rights laid down in conventions and treaties.

Normal admission criteria (such as available places) would still need to be fulfilled, of course, but the records would serve citizens and allow us to finally close the ‘automatic’ recognition debate.

Written by Peter van der Hijden, an independent expert on European higher education, based in Brussels, with the kind support of Prof. Dr. Magdalena Ivanova - expert and independent consultant on training and education.

Brussels, 30.09.2025, higher-education-strategy.eu, petervanderhijden@outlook.com