ExpectedOutcome:
Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes in relation to acceleration services in support of the institutional transformation of higher education institutions (HEI):
- A methodology towards acceleration services that can help HEI or alliances/networks of HEIs in pursuing institutional transformations, including a monitoring mechanism to assess quality of the delivered services.
- A coaching service with best practice examples and guidance for individual HEIs as well as networks of HEIs, aligned with the common transformation agenda, facilitating access to finance from various sources.
- Tested acceleration services with user groups (HEI umbrella organisations, individual HEIs, or networks of HEIs, including partners from surrounding ecosystems), supporting HEI or networks of HEIs in developing a strategy to pursue institutional transformations in the field of R&I.
- An investment strategy mechanism, implemented with the user group, facilitating access to funding from national, regional, or EU resources to deliver on the Higher Education Transformation Agenda.
- Progress of the user groups of the acceleration services regarding the implementation of the chosen areas of the transformation agenda, measured through a monitoring mechanism.
- Policy feedback to the European Commission and Member States on the acceleration services, and widespread dissemination of the pilot results to other target groups
Scope:
The overall aim of the Higher Education Institutions acceleration services is to help institutions to successfully implement a strategy and roadmap for transformation, by creating a shared knowledge base, coaching service and virtual meeting place for them to connect with peers and other ecosystem actors, as well as with investors and public funders. The acceleration services should consist of (i) a coaching and support mechanism for HEIs to pursue institutional transformation in various areas, (ii) a methodology for an investment strategy to facilitate access of higher education institutions and surrounding ecosystem to support to deliver on the chosen transformations, (iii) a monitoring mechanism to assess progress in the transformation efforts. Projects should address all three aspects and test them with user groups.
HEIs, including universities, are crucial drivers of knowledge ecosystems, and increasingly also of innovation ecosystems. The new ERA is expected to strengthen the R&I dimension of HEIs through a comprehensive institutional Higher Education Transformation Agenda in synergy with the European Education Area, reinforcing their role as drivers of change, fostering their recovery, enabling shared objectives between the EU and Member States’ initiatives to support higher education institutions in their efforts to transform on their education, research, innovation and service to society missions. To deliver on the transformation agenda for HEIs a large-scale concerted action in support of the institutional transformation efforts of HEIs will be required, including a standard methodology to develop roadmaps of EU, national and regional actions and investment measures for institutions or alliances.
Projects should build on the results of previous analyses that set out a framework for empowering HEIs across Europe in their research and innovation mission, facilitating ongoing transformation processes based on universities’ needs (“Towards a 2030 Vision on the Future of Universities in the field of research and innovation in Europe”, October 2020[1]), and the analyses performed under the previous Work Programme (in particular the study “Knowledge ecosystems in the new ERA: a comprehensive analysis of the state of play, the design of monitoring mechanisms, and creation of a toolbox of support measures”, 2021).The projects should link and build on the results of the initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) on Innovation Capacity Building for Higher Education launched in 2021 that has the objective to unlock the full innovation potential of higher education institutions (HEIs).
The Higher Education Transformation Agenda developed under the previous Work Programme is expected to include the most important priorities and challenges for HEIs regarding institutional transformations towards the future, including (trans)national cooperation with other HEIs, and the growing importance of engagement with a broad range of sectors and societal actors inherent to the multiple dimensions of HEI (education, research, innovation, service to society). Acceleration services should address all possible R&I areas of the Higher Education Transformation Agenda such as: (a) empower HEIs towards developing shared R&I strategies that deliver on Europe’s challenges with critical mass; (b) facilitate the sharing of capacity, infrastructure and resources through collaborative settings, such as the European Universities initiative; (c) improve the attractiveness of researchers’ careers, including through reform of the career assessment and incentives regimes; (d) facilitate co-operation with surrounding R&I ecosystem actors; (e) support the transition to knowledge- and digitally-driven HEIs that mainstream Open Science practices and include research and innovation outputs in teaching; (f) engage citizens in solving societal challenges; (g) support institutional change through inclusive gender equality plans.
Projects are expected to a methodology how to deploy such acceleration services including (i) access to coaches, mentors, expertise and training from academia or outside academia, with different profiles that match with the areas from the transformation agenda, which the project puts at the disposal of individual HEIs or networks of universities in need of institutional transformation in the field of R&I; these experts, coaches, mentors, etc should provide support for (ii) strategy development, (iii) roadmap development, and (iv) mapping of required support resources, as well as provide (v) detailed advice on access to funding from EU, national, and regional sources to allow the HEIs to deliver on the transformations; this should in particular include support and access to financial instruments for excellent research and innovation capacity, and support for disruptive innovation from academic sector, incl. spin-offs from universities and public research organisations, and cooperation agreements between academic and business sector. This should lead to a standard methodology to develop specific investment agendas for individual institutions or networks of HEI that consists of different funding and financial instrument branches, aligned with the priorities and areas of the common transformation agenda, and realising concerted support to the institutional transformation efforts universities want to engage in.
The acceleration services should be piloted together with large user groups (either individual HEI, networks or alliances of universities and surrounding ecosystem actors, or umbrella organisations of HEI), and progress of the users in the implementation of the chosen areas of the transformation agenda should be measured. Actions should therefore include an evaluation mechanism that enables to assess the strategies from individual HEIs or alliances of universities, pursuing institutional transformation towards universities of the future, for instance under supervision of an ‘acceleration board’ of independent experts. The evaluation mechanism should also monitor progress of the HEIs in the implementation of the chosen areas from the transformation agenda.
Projects should disseminate widely the methodology and the results of the pilot with user groups, as well as provide policy recommendations to the Commission and Member States on the acceleration services, in view of future targeted and synergetic actions in support of Higher Education sector.
The duration of the action should not exceed 5 years.
Cross-cutting Priorities:
Artificial IntelligenceDigital Agenda
[1]https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/a3cde934-12a0-…
