Forum & blog submission guidelines

Skill-building for the future 

Deadline to submit: 04 August 2025 

The European Commission recently published the ‘Union of Skills’ communication, proposing an agenda for retaining talent, boosting skills, and making Europe more competitive— also underlining the need to recognise credentials across borders.  

The global demand for skills is, in fact, rapidly evolving, driven by the green transition, technological change, demographic shifts, societal needs and geopolitics. So how can (international) higher education play its role in effectively preparing people – with the right skills – for the future? Universities and universities of applied sciences, polytechnics, vocational training institutions, and lifelong learning initiatives must work in new and different ways to equip learners with future-proof competencies. How can internationalisation be part of the solution?  

The Winter 2025 issue of Forum magazine will focus on this key question and seek input from the EAIE community and beyond on this timely topic. 

We welcome diverse perspectives on these issues, particularly around: 

• Higher education’s skill-building role: How can higher education institutions balance employability demands with helping students develop cross-cultural sensitivities and personal attributes that transcend ‘job readiness’ strictly speaking? 

• Global talent mobility: Can international student flows address skill gaps through brain circulation without exacerbating the brain drain in their home countries? 

• The skills that matter most: What are the most important skills students need to develop today? How can HEIs teach meaningful skills (like intercultural competence) to domestic and international students globally while meeting local job market skill needs? 

• Micro-credentials as a tool: What are the benefits and challenges of a reliance on micro-credentials for skill-building as students move across borders? 

• What role for language skills? In an era of AI-powered resources and the widespread use of one dominant language, what is the place of national and other language skills? How do we balance the need for a lingua franca with an interest in cultivating diverse language skills? 

• Hard skills vs. soft skills: Will prioritising "technical skills" (such as STEM) divert attention from other crucial areas for skill development, for example, addressing ‘the human side’ of healthcare and education?  

• Managing multiple missions: In a highly competitive (global) environment, how do HEIs respond to the demand to develop the skills of the current and future labour force while balancing other institutional priorities? 

We are happy to receive real-world perspectives—success stories, critiques, or case studies—on developing or applying skills across borders. How do we make education flexible and relevant for employment in different places and times without losing depth and focus on education itself? How do we balance the skills needed for local development with the graduates’ preparedness for global competition? 

European Universities Alliances

Deadline to submit: 14 March 2025 

The highly ambitious European Universities Initiative was launched in 2019 by the European Commission, with the May 2021 Council Conclusions on the European Universities reiterating support for these institutions to promote:  

... gender equality, inclusiveness, and equity, allowing for seamless and ambitious transnational cooperation between higher education institutions in Europe, and inspiring the transformation of higher education. 

As of 2024, 65 alliances are funded, involving more than 560 HEIs from 35 countries. As we begin to see the emergence of a cohort of graduates whose entire education has been conducted through European Universities Alliances, it’s a good moment to take stock. Are these Alliances reshaping the way education is being carried out across Europe and creating opportunities for international education that were previously unimaginable, as envisioned?  Where has experimentation and deep collaboration been more or less fruitful? What steps are being taken to widen access to the scheme and ensure the inclusion agenda cited above is being realised? How can the higher education community – across Europe and farther afield, notably in the Global South – engage actively with, and derive benefits from, the Alliances’ successes as well as the harder lessons they have learned? 

The 2025 Summer edition of Forum magazine will turn its attention towards European Universities Alliances and will provide a platform to critically reflect on their benefits, the challenges they face and their impact on the framework of higher education in Europe and beyond. We encourage submissions relating to the themes explored above, as well as, but not limited to, the following: 

• What do we know about the experiences of universities outside the Alliances? How have learnings generated inside the Alliances been shared beyond their boundaries? 
• To what extent are the ambitions of the project being realised? Do universities collect data on how Alliances have impacted their excellence, inclusivity, sustainability, and equity? 
• How are Alliances positioned within the established ecosystem of European higher education? How has/will their proliferation affect(ed) this? 
• What new ways of working, teaching and research have developed following the establishment of the Alliances? What teething issues remain? Which innovations can be transferred beyond the Alliances? 
• How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect the Alliances and their formation? Are there lingering effects from this major global disruption that hit during the launch stage of this initiative? 
• What are the implications for the top-down arrangement of Alliances? How are Alliances getting academic staff members involved and are there good examples of such efforts?  
• What can we learn from those with hands-on experiences of Alliance formation and facilitation? 
• What are the key issues in play today relating to the Alliances’ legal status, including European degree accreditation and inclusion of research? 
• How are students involved in the alliances? What is the experience of first generation of graduates from EUA? 
• What does the future of funding look like for European Universities Alliances? Should funding be redirected from other Erasmus+ actions? What would be the ideal situation?  
• Longitudinal perspectives on the direction of European Universities Alliances  
• What critiques can be levied at the European Universities Alliances as a project? What are the concerns about this new paradigm of education and its broader impact?