How European university alliances are making the European degree a reality

The European Degree is becoming more and more the central focus of European university alliances, senior alliance representatives told News Tank at the 2025 EAIE conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, in September.

Across all alliances, they agreed that accreditation remains the main bottleneck and that working with multiple national agencies can be slow and complex.

Within the Unita alliance, for example, the education departments are aligning credits, assessments and quality standards across 12 universities to create a European degree strategy.

The Erua alliance considers joint degrees as a big priority. They are working on one dedicated to migration, which is one of their five thematic topics. Migration is very complex in Europe, and "we are proud we’ve designed something that can really help tackle these challenges in a multidisciplinary way: from sociology to education, many disciplines are involved", Secretary General Bruna Vives Prat told News Tank.

Alongside joint degrees, alliances are developing new models like micro-credentials, lifelong learning, and even shared governance…