How was this evaluation carried out?

The Institutional Evaluation Programme is a peer-review process run by the European University Association to help member universities review how they operate. For thirty years, it has evaluated over 460 universities in more than 50 countries. Each institution writes a self-assessment, then a team of university leaders from outside spends a week comparing that account with what they learn from staff, students, and leaders.

INGENIUM is the first alliance to be evaluated under this programme. Universities and alliances take part to gain an outside perspective, to see what may have gone unnoticed from inside and where there is room to improve.

The evaluation began with a remote session in February to help evaluators understand INGENIUM’s goals and decide where to focus during their visit. The main phase ran from 6 to 10 April at the University of Oviedo, the alliance’s coordinating institution. During that week, evaluators spoke with about sixty people, including rectors, coordinators, staff, students, and associate partners.

Months earlier, INGENIUM had prepared a self-evaluation report that answered five key questions, along with supporting documents such as the original application to the European Commission’s funding call and details about INGENIUM’s governance, past and future. The report now responds to all these materials and the subsequent interviews.

Acting as one, a challenge every alliance is still working through

The report’s most detailed section looks at how INGENIUM makes decisions and organises its daily work, an area where the evaluators see room to keep advancing, as in any young alliance of this kind.

Three years in, INGENIUM still carries the imprint of the funding project that brought it into being. Its governance, budgeting, performance indicators, and internal vocabulary continue to reflect project management, and the evaluators see the alliance’s next stage of development as one of building institutional thinking alongside it.

On strategy, the evaluators found broad agreement among partners that deeper integration is a shared goal, with more work still to do on what that should actually look like over the next three to five years. INGENIUM’s new long-term strategy is read as a strong first step, with the fuller operational plan as the natural next step to build.

The plan to register INGENIUM as a European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation, a legal structure meant to let the alliance function more like a single institution, is the piece of this picture furthest along, with its statutes approved and national authorisations underway. The one point the evaluators invite the alliance to think through further is how far it wants this new structure to take it, and whether it is ready to use it as the framework for moving past the confederation of institutions, growing into the fully integrated European university its founding partners set out to build.

Quality culture, one step closer to daily practice

In 2025, INGENIUM approved a Joint Quality Assurance Policy covering both an internal quality management system and a separate policy for joint academic programmes, aligned with European standards. The evaluators found the joint programmes side of this policy well advanced. It gives INGENIUM a solid basis for following the European Approach to quality assurance and, in time, accrediting its own joint programmes, easing its dependence upon on ten different national systems.

The internal quality management system is where the evaluators see the clearest opportunity to build further. Satisfaction data, one of the indicators the policy itself identifies as central, is currently collected separately by each partner university, and bringing it together under a shared standard would allow INGENIUM’s quality assurance bodies to draw on it directly. Several of the key performance indicators the policy sets out are ready for regular use, giving the alliance a natural next step in putting its framework into regular practice.

The evaluators encourage INGENIUM to build a system with well-defined procedures, clear responsibilities, regular review cycles, and visible follow-up, and welcome the alliance’s own plan to replace the current Quality Assurance Committee with a new Quality Assurance Board tied to an annual cycle of review.

Teaching and learning, real momentum to keep building on

In just over three years, INGENIUM has created a broad range of educational offerings, several of which are about to become real. The Chemical and Biochemical Process Technology master’s, run jointly by the University of Oviedo, the Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iaşi and the University of Rouen-Normandy, has already secured its accreditation from the Romanian quality agency under the European Approach, and enrolment for its first cohort is open, making it the alliance’s first fully accredited joint programme.

Twelve pathway programmes across five partner universities are launching their first cohort in the coming academic year, each one letting students combine home study with structured mobility and challenge-based work across the alliance. The catalogue of joint Blended Intensive Programmes for 2026/2027 is already published, and the list of micro-credentials keeps growing.

The evaluators see the next stage of this work as bringing all these pieces together into a single visible whole. This gives INGENIUM a real opportunity to build a single, shared view of its educational offering, one that lets every partner university and every student see the whole picture at once rather than the slice that falls under their own area.

Students interviewed confirmed the strength of what is already on offer, saying they valued the model’s flexibility.

The report suggests INGENIUM has an opportunity to concentrate its strength in a smaller number of well-supported flagship programmes, chosen against clear criteria of strategic relevance, institutional readiness and student demand, building real depth alongside the range it has already created. It also raises a question: whether INGENIUM has the chance to settle for itself in this next phase, who counts as an INGENIUM student, and what should be true of someone before they are called an INGENIUM graduate.

Working this out now, while the first joint master launches its first cohort and the first pathway programmes open their doors across five universities, would let the alliance grow its offer with a clearer sense of identity behind it.

Service to society, real reach waiting to be joined up

INGENIUM has publicly committed to the Sustainable Development Goals and has dedicated efforts to sustainability and inclusion across the alliance. The evaluators see a clear opportunity for INGENIUM to bring these commitments together into one framework that shows, in a single place, how they translate into practice across all ten universities.

Associate partners illustrate this well. These are the companies, public bodies and municipalities that already support INGENIUM’s work through their relationship with one member university, and interviews confirmed how strong that existing relationship is. What has not yet developed is awareness of the alliance as a whole among these same partners, a natural next step once local ties are already this solid.

The report recommends a stakeholder model that builds on these strong local relationships and adds a smaller number of partnerships designed to work across several INGENIUM universities simultaneously, so that the alliance’s combined scale becomes something associate partners can draw on directly.

Internationalisation, one of INGENIUM’s clearest successes

Mobility is, according to the evaluators, INGENIUM’s most valued achievement. Students spoke with real zeal about their experiences at other INGENIUM universities, and several partners have seen clear growth in the number of students going abroad since joining the alliance, a result few alliances this young can claim with the same confidence.

International students have embraced the offer with particular energy, and the evaluators see the same enthusiasm as fully within reach for local students as well, once academic calendars are aligned more closely across countries and administrative processes are brought into line.

Credit recognition, already working in many cases, is set to become fully consistent as agreements already in place extend across the whole alliance. Intercultural learning, already prized by everyone interviewed, has all the ingredients it needs to become an explicit, named part of INGENIUM’s educational design.

The evaluators recommend concentrating on the practical steps that will carry this furthest: aligning calendars, simplifying administration, clarifying credit rules, and giving staff greater recognition for the mobility work they already carry out so well, so that this strength rests on the whole alliance rather than on individual effort alone.

What happens now

Three years ago, ten universities agreed to test whether they could learn to act as one, and the evaluators left Oviedo having watched them do it. That is the quiet argument running under everything else in this report, that the case for INGENIUM no longer needs making, only building on, with the same people more evenly supported and a documentation of the alliance’s own progress that keeps pace with how fast it is moving.

Since this evaluation took place, the European Commission has selected INGENIUM’s Next INGENIUM proposal for two further years of Erasmus+ funding through to December 2028, giving the alliance the means to carry everything in this report considerably further.

On 9 July 2026, INGENIUM learned that the European Commission had selected its Next INGENIUM proposal for funding through the Erasmus+ European Universities call. This means the alliance will get Erasmus+ support until December 2028, with about 7.2 million euros.

The call closed in March, and results were expected later in the year. Now, the outcome gives the ten universities a clear two-year window to build on the work they started together in the early years.

From 2023 to 2026, INGENIUM built the foundations of its transnational alliance. This included setting up governance bodies, joint educational frameworks, and shared policies on sustainability, inclusion, multilingualism, and wellbeing. In the next phase, these elements will become part of daily life at the ten universities.

The alliance has goals that go beyond this funding period. By 2035, INGENIUM wants to function as a single European University across ten locations, with unified academic processes, more opportunities for mobility, joint qualifications to address skills gaps in Europe, and a permanent legal entity to keep the work going beyond each funding cycle.

What we said when the proposal went in

When INGENIUM submitted the proposal in March, the Director, Juan Rayón, said this new phase is about moving towards deeper integration. “What we want with Next INGENIUM is for students, academics and stakeholders to see cooperation with their INGENIUM partners (with other professors, other students, other researchers) as something completely inherent to the experience of being part of our university community,” he pointed out.

For students, he placed the European dimension at the very start of their education. “We want every student to feel that being part of an INGENIUM campus means having a European dimension built into their education from day one (…) By 2028/2029, our ambition is to have seven joint programmes fully operational across all levels, Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral, aligned with the European Degree label, giving graduates a qualification with genuine European recognition and value in the labour market.”

Rayón was equally clear about the legal instrument underpinning that ambition, the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation, which he expected INGENIUM to be “the first alliance to implement”. Even within its current rules, he noted, the structure “gives INGENIUM a legal personality that enables joint contracts, staff hiring, property management, and direct access to European and national funding programmes.”

An alliance already in motion

This funding decision comes at a busy time for INGENIUM. On 7 July, the alliance became the first to finish the Institutional Evaluation Programme of the European University Association.

In education, the INGENIUM Chemical and Biochemical Process Technology master’s programme, offered together by the University of Oviedo, Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iaşi, and the University of Rouen-Normandy, has been accredited by the Romanian quality agency under the European Approach and is now enrolling its first students. Also, twelve pathway programmes at five partner universities will welcome their first students next academic year. The catalogue of joint Blended Intensive Programmes for 2026/2027 is already available, and the list of micro-credentials is growing.

The legal entity that will support much of this work is almost ready. The INGENIUM European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation has approved statutes, and national authorisations are underway.

Next INGENIUM

Next INGENIUM is organised around four main areas. The first is governance and institutional transformation, which brings coordination under one structure and moves the EGTC from approved statutes to a working legal entity. The second area, the educational core, focuses on both what and how teaching happens in the alliance. This includes building a stronger Staff Academy for teaching development, expanding joint programmes and flexible pathways that match the European Degree, and connecting research with teaching through Knowledge Ecosystems based on INGENIUM’s doctoral structures.

The third area is external engagement. This means making mobility a standard part of study through a shared Mobility Charter and central hub, connecting academic programmes to regional skills needs under the Union of Skills agenda, and building stronger ties with students, staff, and local communities. The last area is communication and advocacy, which shares results with a wider audience and tracks the regulatory challenges that still affect cross-border cooperation.

The goals for this period show how ambitious the project is. INGENIUM plans to have seven joint programmes with students enrolled, more than twenty pathway programmes, twenty micro-credentials, over one hundred courses in a shared catalogue, and about three thousand mobility experiences by the end of 2028.

These activities come together in the Annual Education Cycle, a yearly process that follows the academic calendar and gives the alliance a reliable way to design, deliver, and review joint education. Each cycle starts with discussions between the partner universities and their regional partners, including businesses, public authorities, and civil society, to identify new skills needs. These needs lead to an annual call for new joint education, after which staff from different universities meet to develop and refine proposals. Selected teams then join the INGENIUM Staff Academy, where they co-design their courses and present their work at the INGENIUM Annual Conference. The first full cycle will run during the 2027/2028 academic year.

In February 2026, the Rectors and Presidents of the ten universities approved a revised Mission Statement describing what they want INGENIUM to become. It defines the alliance’s identity as an “Alliance of Diversity” and commits them to deep institutional transformation. It additionally sets a clear goal for 2035: a fully integrated European University with ten campuses across the Union, recognised for the quality, inclusiveness, and relevance of its education, for its contribution to European competitiveness and social cohesion, and for its role in changing European higher education.

The INGENIUM Alliance held a meeting of its Alliance Council at the University of Rouen-Normandy on 16 June 2026, in a session that worked both as a review of the alliance’s first funding phase and as a planning exercise for what follows. The meeting took place during the French university’s 60th anniversary and was chaired by Prof Ignacio Villaverde, President of the INGENIUM Alliance Council and Rector of the University of Oviedo.

INGENIUM has just completed its first external assessment, carried out under the Institutional Evaluation Programme of the European University Association, and the alliance was the first of its kind to take part in that programme. It is now awaiting the outcome of ‘Next INGENIUM’, its application for the 2027-2028 period. The Council used that intersection to prepare the transition between phases and to define how the alliance would protect its main lines of cooperation under any funding result.

The Director of the Alliance, Juan Rayón, set out the shift the alliance is working through, from a logic of funded projects towards a more permanent structure of collaboration between universities. Prof Villaverde put the same idea to the Council in plainer terms: “the momentum we have created must continue regardless of the outcome of any individual funding call.”

A year of joint education

Much of the morning was given over to what INGENIUM has built across the academic year, with the joint education offer as the clearest evidence. The alliance delivered its first accreditation under the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes, awarded by the Romanian agency ARACIS to the joint Master’s in Chemical and Biochemical Process Technologies run by Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi, University Rouen Normandy, and University of Oviedo. It is the first accreditation of its kind in Romania and the starting point for teaching in the coming academic year.

A second joint Master’s, in sustainable maritime management and coastal conservation, is close behind in the accreditation process, alongside further programmes at Bachelor and doctoral level.

The offer extends well beyond degree programmes. Up to fourteen micro-credentials are in accreditation and expected to begin before December, with the first courses already running across several partners. The alliance’s Pathway Programmes, which combine partner courses, blended intensive programmes and a guaranteed long-term mobility within a single itinerary, now number thirteen, twelve of them opening to students in 2026/2027, against an original target of ten. The Council also reviewed the Blended Intensive Programmes planned for next year, the joint doctoral programmes under way, and the Education Labs and research groups that connect teaching and research across the partnership.

Ready for any scenario

The central decision of the Council concerned the activities INGENIUM commits to sustain whether or not its main grant is renewed. Partners agreed that joint and collaborative education, together with their progression towards the European Degree, forms the shared core of the alliance, supported by student and staff mobility through Erasmus+ KA131, by blended intensive programmes and by a growing offer of micro-credentials, all organised within a single annual cycle designed to keep coordination lean.

Around that core, the Council confirmed a common floor of institutional commitments, so that the responsibility for sustaining the alliance is shared across the partnership and planned in advance instead of falling on a handful of universities.

Prof Villaverde tied the point to the alliance’s own resources. “There is so much potential in our collaboration that we cannot depend solely on external European Union funding,” he told the Council. “We must also sustain it with our own resources to make the most of its reach.”

A legal entity to give the alliance continuity

INGENIUM is in the process of establishing a European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation as its future legal entity, with its headquarters at the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (Xamk). The application is before the Finnish authorities and registration is expected around the turn of the year.

Partners agreed the first-year priorities for the entity and a funding approach that keeps it lean from the outset, concentrating its early work on three functions: securing external funding for the alliance’s priorities, representing INGENIUM before European institutions and the wider community of alliances, and coordinating the annual education cycle.

On resources, the Council favoured an approach that lets the entity begin without significant additional outlay in its first phase, drawing on member contributions and on the funding it generates as it builds a track record.

INGENIUM expects the results of the ‘Next INGENIUM’ application in the second half of July and will convene a meeting after the summer to analyse them and prepare the transition in either case. The alliance will close its first phase at a Final Conference in late November 2026, with the University of Oviedo as host.

As Prof Villaverde reminded the Council in Rouen, the alliance now lets very different institutions “work together, learn from one another’s experience and build shared answers to challenges that no single university can tackle alone.”

The paper, titled Unlocking Erasmus+ KA131 for Joint Programmes: The Case for Removing the 12-Month Mobility Limit, sets out a practical adaptation to the Erasmus+ Programme Guide that would allow KA131 funding to cover the full duration of a Joint Programme.

The proposal responds to a structural difficulty in the way Joint Programmes are currently funded. Under the present Programme Guide, KA131 long-term mobility is capped at twelve months per study cycle, a limit designed for the classic exchange model in which a student spends part of a degree abroad before returning home.

Joint Programmes work differently: mobility forms part of the curriculum itself, with students typically studying at two or more partner institutions across the full twenty-four months of a joint Master’s, or thirty-six months of a joint Bachelor’s. The twelve-month cap therefore covers, at best, half of a student’s mobility needs at Master’s level and only a third at Bachelor’s level.

The eight Alliances argue that closing this gap requires neither new legislation nor additional budget. Article 5 of the Erasmus+ Regulation (EU) 2021/817 sets no maximum duration for mobility activities, so the twelve-month cap is a provision of the Programme Guide rather than a legal requirement.

Because the Commission revises the Programme Guide annually in consultation with the Erasmus+ Programme Committee, the change can be introduced for the 2027 Work Programme without amending the Regulation, building on earlier adaptations such as the recent revision of the rules governing Blended Intensive Programmes.

The paper puts forward three targeted amendments to the Programme Guide. The first establishes an exception to the twelve-month limit for students in Joint Programmes accredited under the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes, subject to a clause preventing double funding.

The second introduces flexibility in defining the sending institution, so that any partner in a consortium can take on that role and the funding burden is shared more equitably across the partnership. The third offers an optional budget ceiling that protects the general mobility pool, giving National Agencies control over how much KA131 funding is directed towards Joint Programme mobility.

Alongside these immediate measures, the paper sets out two complementary proposals for the sustainable funding of Joint Programmes as the European Degree agenda scales over the coming years, namely the recognition of Joint Programme delivery in KA131 funding allocation and the introduction of organisational support grants comparable to those already available for Blended Intensive Programmes.

The timing of the proposal is closely tied to the European Degree agenda. The Council Resolution of 12 May 2025 on a European Degree label, together with the European Degree Exploratory Actions backed by a €14 million call for proposals, has placed Joint Programmes at the centre of European higher education policy. Yet accredited Joint Programmes remain few: fewer than one hundred have been evaluated under the European Approach, most at Master’s level and many linked to Erasmus Mundus, while a survey by the FOREU4ALL topical group identified 86 joint degrees currently operational or in accreditation and a further 125 under development across the Alliances alone.

Because most cohorts range between twenty and forty students, the budgetary effect of extending KA131 mobility would be modest, while the effect on the viability of these programmes could be considerable.

The Alliances frame the proposal as a question of inclusivity. Erasmus Mundus funding has historically concentrated among research-intensive universities, leaving universities of applied sciences and other institution types with limited access. KA131, by contrast, is available to every accredited higher education institution in Europe through its National Agency, which makes it the most widely accessible instrument for supporting Joint Programme mobility across institutional profiles and across regions, including those facing depopulation, where programmes with an embedded European dimension can help retain talent.

INGENIUM and the other seven signatory Alliances invite European University Alliances, Joint Programme consortia, stakeholders and policy-makers to endorse the position and to support the inclusion of these adaptations in the 2027 Erasmus+ Work Programme and Programme Guide. The full paper is available below.