European Agenda, COVID and the future of European universities: from a European, cross-border and regional approach

In 2020, the year that marks the 70th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration and as the President of the European Commission recalled in her speech for Europe Day on 9 May, “We are at a time of fragility for Europe and we need to be bolder when facing those challenges. Across our continent, more than 100,000 have died because of the coronavirus in the last months. Hundreds of millions have faced unprecedented restrictions in their daily lives to help contain the spread of the virus... Only a strong European Union can protect our citizens, our common heritage and the economies of our member states”. Now more than even the European Union’s motto “united in diversity” can be combined with “united in adversity”.

The pandemic has directly struck education and the European educational model with the closure of education and training institutions in most EU states. Classrooms and educational centres have gone online, meaning that universities/academic staff/researchers/managers and university staff have had to rebrand themselves in the short and long term and students have needed to adapt to the digital model. Digital education in the European Union was already happening on a very limited basis, but the sudden need created by the crisis has forced universities to take an unexpected leap into the digital world. This has often meant overcoming many constraints in order to keep the virtual platforms active in a very short space of time.

The digital educational model itself and the new skills/specialisations are gaining in strengthen and putting the traditional European mobility model, driven through the projects and initiatives in the Erasmus and Horizon Europe Programmes, as well as by the educational “credits” and scales, dual education, etc., on the backburner to a certain extent. As Mariya Gabriel, the European Commissioner for Education, Innovation and Research, has pointed out, this opportunity needs to be harnessed, despite the challenges, to analyse in greater depth the importance and intrinsic value of the digital teaching models and assess the resulting experiences to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. Further investment and research are needed into good practices in the virtual teaching models, as putting teachers in front of a camera is not sufficient to provide quality teaching online.

Universities have a truly central role to play in the development of innovative creative solutions for many of the global and social challenges we are facing today as a society, along with those of the current international and European agenda (Sustainable Development Goals) and context, to deal with COVID-19 and its short- and long-term consequences.

Paying attention to the international and European agendas is fundamental, along with closely following the role that education and research are going to have in current EU strategic lines with regard to the European Green Deal and the European Digital Agenda.