After a tough and competitive selection process, the project developed by the University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering (UNITE!) was one of the 17 selected projects by the European Commission. Técnico was selected to participate in this EU challenge, representing Universidade de Lisboa (ULisboa), which aims to foster the cooperation between higher education institutions in the European Union (EU).
ULisboa, Aalto University (Finland), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Grenoble Institute of Technology (France), Politecnico di Torino (Italy), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain) and Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany) – which coordinates the project – recognised the importance of this challenge and started to outline a project that ended up to be one of the winning projects. The collaboration protocol was signed at Técnico on April 11th.
The announcement of the winning projects took place this Wednesday, June 26th. 54 applications were received, involving more than three hundred universities from the 28 Member States. Besides UNITE!, there are more 16 European Universities alliances involving 114 higher education institutions from 24 Member States, including Portuguese universities – Aveiro and Porto. The selection process was based on the assessment carried out by 26 independent external experts, including rectors, professors and researchers appointed by the European Commission. ULisboa is awarded the title of “European University”. A trans-European campus will be created, which will allow scientific cooperation in the fields of teaching, research and knowledge transfer. This trans-European campus is expected to be fully operational by 2025.
The next step involves a pilot project developed by each one of the alliances that will serve as a guide for the future transnational universities, where students, professors and researchers will be able to share classrooms, laboratories and get a joint degree.
The seven partners of UNITE! have a solid history of collaboration: they are part of the Consortium Linking Universities of Science and Technology for Education and Research (CLUSTER). Together, the seven institutions have more than 167,000 students enrolled and about 36,700 students graduate annually.
Education, student and individual mobility, and entrepreneurship will be the most important pillars of this project. According to the European Union, it is expected that these universities will become “inter-university campuses around which students, doctoral candidates, staff and researchers can move seamlessly”. “They will pool their expertise, platforms and resources to deliver joint curricula or modules covering various disciplines. These curricula will be very flexible and will allow students to personalise their education, choosing what, where and when to study and get a European degree”, the commission says.
