Europeanisation agenda and membership in the European Higher Education Area post-2020

Setting the context

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is an international initiative for the harmonisation of higher education (HE) systems in 47 countries (down from 49 counties following the suspension of the memberships of Russia and Belarus in April 2022). While literature about the participation of the UK, Germany, France and Italy in the EHEA is diverse, limited research explores them jointly as the four founding members of the EHEA.

The originality of this project is in addressing this gap by investigating their key HE stakeholders’ perspectives on the role of the EHEA in shaping the evolving mission of the European project (or in other terms - Europe) that has increasingly been transcending the borders of the European Union, the membership of which is a lot smaller than that of the EHEA. The temporal focus covered the early 2020s. 2020 is a ‘tipping point’ for EHEA’s signatories because it was the deadline for achieving a fully-functioning EHEA. The post-2020 temporal landscape is also significant due to the impact of the pandemic, Brexit and the Russian war in Ukraine on HE.

Addressing the challenge

This project draws on theoretical ideas of differentiated Europeanisation and thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with representatives from the stakeholders in the four countries (e.g., government, national branches of international organisations affiliated with the Bologna Process), supplemented by the analysis of their official communications.

This research project has demonstrated that the EHEA has been an important platform for the meaning-making process of the mission of Europe, with the EHEA gaining momentum in supporting political stability in the European region, predominantly recently – in the early 2020s. Furthermore, the findings from this project suggest that the stakeholders of each of the EHEA’s founding countries (i.e., Germany, France, Italy and the UK), despite having different priorities and visions for their memberships in the EHEA and EHEA’s role for Europe, have all been contributory to the making of the purpose of the Europe as an insurer of stability and dialogue amongst the countries in the region.

To:

- the EHEA’s Bologna Follow-Up Group (executive structure that supports the development of the EHEA in-between EHEA ministerial conferences);

- the European Commission (a members of the EHEA);

- the Bologna secretariats of Romania and Moldova that have offered to host the next EHEA ministerial conference in 2027.

Key messages:

- To achieve EHEA’s goal to become more inclusive, innovative and interconnected by 2030, it should be discussed at EHEA’s interim events and the 2027 ministerial conference (and acknowledged in the 2027 communique) that the EHEA has been playing a politically important role which goes beyond the matters of higher education per se. The EHEA has been playing a crucial role in Europe as an insurer of stability and dialogue amongst the countries in the European region.

- The future of the EHEA should be built on this capacity in the context of the fading public interest in the EHEA.

Researchers

Dr Iryna Kushnir is the PI on this project. Dr Kushnir specialises in Europeanisation and internationalisation in higher education, higher education policy, European integration, migration, social justice and post-Soviet transition. Her prior projects focused on the European Higher Education Area (Bologna Process) on the international level and the national levels of Ukraine, the UK, Germany, France and Italy, as well as the international policy-making level of the European Education Area and the relationship between European integration and the post-2015 migrant crisis. The policy mechanisms she investigated included, for example, policy learning and neo-institutional perspectives.

Dr Ruby Brooks was a Research Assistant for the UK case study, and Dr Nuve Yazgan worked as a Research Associate on the other three case studies (France, Germany and Italy) project. Dr Charlotte-Rose Kennedy also assisted in supporting the write up on one related publication.

This project was funded by Spencer Foundation Small Research Grant ($50,000), and the UK case study of the project has also been partly supported by Research England through funding awarded by NTU.

Peer-reviewed articles:

Kushnir, I. and Yazgan, N. (2024). Shifting geopolitics of the European higher education space. European Journal of Higher Education IF 2.6. https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2024.2398742

Kushnir, I. and Yazgan, N. (2023). The politics of higher education: the European Higher Education Area through the eyes of its stakeholders in France and Italy. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications IF 3.5 https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02300-x

Kushnir, I., Eta, E.A., Mbah, M.F. and Kennedy, C.R., 2024. The orchestration of a sustainable development agenda in the European Higher Education Area. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 25(1), pp. 143-160. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-12-2022-0394

Kushnir, I. (2023). “It is more than just education. It’s also a peace policy”: (re)imagining the mission of the European Higher Education Area in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. European Education Research Journal IF 2.517 https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041231200927

Kushnir, I. Rational-choice neo-institutionalism in Europeanisation in the UK and Germany: the toolkit offered by their memberships in the European Higher Education Area. European Education IF 0.629 https://doi.org/10.1080/10564934.2023.2226634

Kushnir, I. and Brooks, R. (2022).UK membership(s) in the European Higher Education Area post-2020: a ‘Europeanisation’ agenda. European Educational Research Journal IF 2.517 https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041221083073

Dataset

Kushnir, I. (2022). Interview materials: Europeanisation agenda and membership in the European Higher Education Area post-2020: stakeholders’ perspectives from the UK, Germany, France and Italy. Nottingham Trent University Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.17631/RD-2022-0001-DDOC

Blog article

Kushnir, I. (2022). Why does the UK continue its memberships of the European Higher Education Area post-Brexit [12 October 2022]. WonkHE https://wonkhe.com/blogs/why-does-the-uk-continue-its-memberships-of-the-european-higher-education-area-post-brexit/

Relevant conference presentations and other events (selected)

‘(Re)imagining the mission of the European Higher Education Area in the context of the war in Ukraine’ Paper presentation at the annual BERA conference (Manchester, UK; September 2024)

‘Europeanisation agenda and membership in the European Higher Education Area post-2020: stakeholders’ perspectives from Germany and the UK’. Research talk at the annual BERA conference (Liverpool, UK, September 2022)

‘The evolution of the meaning of “social justice” in the European Higher Education Area’. Research talk at the Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education (Oslo, Norway; August 2022)

‘Europeanisation agenda and membership in the European Higher Education Area post-2020: stakeholders’ perspectives from Germany and the UK’. Research talk at the annual ECER conference (Yerevan, Armenia; August 2022)

‘Education as a front-line: an imaginary or emerging phenomenon’. Report presentation at the International Round Table ‘Education and the Education Community in the Context of War’ Ivan Franko Drohobych State Pedagogical University, Ukraine (Drohobych, Ukraine (online); May, 2022)

‘UK’s membership in the European Higher Education Area post-2020: a Europeanisation agenda’. Paper presentation at the annual ECER conference (Geneva, Switzerland (online); September, 2021)

Authored research monograph

Kushnir, I. European cooperation in higher education: shaping the future of Europe. Emerald Publishing. https://bookstore.emerald.com/european-cooperation-in-higher-education-pb-9781837535194.html