A Commission report highlights the European Degree’s potential for national collaboration, but legal barriers and national alignment remain key hurdles.
The European Commission (EC) recently published its report on the final outcomes of the Erasmus+ policy experimentation projects piloting the European Degree (see SwissCore article).
In 2022, the EC’s Communication on a European strategy for universities first presented the European degree (ED) as an upcoming flagship initiative to strengthen the competitiveness of the European higher education sector. With its Recommendation on building bridges for effective European higher education cooperation, the Council tasked the EC to pilot criteria for an ED label as well as to review existing policy frameworks to foster deeper collaboration between universities. Consequently, the 2022 Erasmus+ call selected 10 pilot projects which delivered on this request in late 2024. Among these, the European Universities alliances were particularly well represented, effectively taking on their pioneering role in the higher education landscape. The current report summarises the main findings and outcomes of the pilot projects, which further serve as the evidence feeding into the Blueprint for a European Degree, adopted by the EC in March 2024.
According to the report, all projects emphasised the potential of the ED to enhance transnational collaboration and to improve the visibility and competitiveness of European higher education. Moreover, most projects highlighted the ED’s potential to considerably simplify the design, implementation and, from a student perspective, participation in joint degree programmes. At the same time, there is broad consensus between participating institutions that the ED’s implementation requires alignment of national legal frameworks as well as significant coordination between stakeholders. To this end, the EC foresees establishing an ED policy lab as well as an ED forum. Both aim to serve as mechanisms to facilitate a dialogue between member states and key actors involved in rolling out the ED. Besides higher education institutions (HEIs), national quality assurance agencies and student representative bodies are identified in the report as important stakeholders in this conversation. In their conclusions, all pilot projects note the complexity of navigating the different national regulations, which remain a main barrier to the implementation of the ED. At the same time, the project outputs indicate that existing transnational quality assurance frameworks, such as the Bologna tools, are important building blocks on the road towards a unified approach to joint degrees.
The report also studies the implementation of an ED label, which would take the form of a diploma supplement attesting to the added value of the joint degree. The label is widely seen as an intermediate step on the road towards full implementation of the ED. This would enable the gradual adaptation and harmonisation of national higher education policies to accommodate the ED in the member states’ legal frameworks. An important benefit of the label is that it would not require immediate changes to national regulations. Stakeholders seem to agree that the label could enhance recognition, branding, and the reputation of joint degree programmes. To protect its credibility and added value, however, it is suggested that the label should be strictly in line with the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes and the 16 co-created ED criteria. Individual projects also dove deeper into the potential scope of such an ED label. For instance, the FOCI consortium recommends to include complementary education models, such as microcredentials, in the joint degree programmes, in order to ensure that these are aligned with other European higher education priorities. Importantly, the report notes that a label itself would not entail the same advantages of administrative simplification as a full ED would.
Overall, the outcomes of the 2022 policy experimentation call have painted a picture of the remaining stark differences between national study programmes. Divergent regulations of academic calendars, integration of blended and online learning contents, and even thickness of diploma paper could effectively stand in the way of a European-level qualification as foreseen through the ED. To enable the higher education sector to jointly tackle these hurdles, the EC has announced the funding of ED exploratory actions and pathway projects under the 2025 Erasmus+ programme. However, the launch of these calls has been delayed due to resistance of many member states to elevate influence on joint degrees to the European level, as education is a member state competence. May 2025 will see discussions about the ED criteria in the Council and only then could the related Erasmus+ calls be launched. Despite not being a programme country to Erasmus+, several Swiss actors have contributed as associated partners to the relevant pilot projects, among them the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), the University of Geneva, the University of Zurich, and the Swiss Accreditation Council. This collaboration continues the alignment between Swiss and European higher education policies. Switzerland is also a member of the Bologna process follow-up working group and a part of the European Education Area. Moreover, there are already a number of joint degrees in place between Swiss and EU-based HEIs. If the EC’s plans for a European degree are coming to fruition, Switzerland will ultimately have to decide whether to follow suit with member states’ implementation.