The European Universities Initiative (EUI) promotes transnational cooperation in higher education to expand access to international opportunities and foster diverse and inclusive academic environments. While European university alliances are increasingly recognised as key instruments in this process, empirical evidence on how students and staff experience participation in alliance activities remains limited. This paper examines the ENHANCE alliance as a case to explore how diversity and inclusion are perceived within alliance-based activities.

The analysis draws exclusively on data from the ENHANCE Diversity & Inclusion surveys, conducted at the end of 2023, 2024 and 2025. The surveys capture participants' self-reported characteristics in ENHANCE activities and their perceptions of diversity, inclusion, equal opportunities, representation, and the involvement of disadvantaged groups. The study adopts a descriptive and comparative approach, with year-to-year differences interpreted cautiously and primarily used to support reflection.

The findings highlight the presence of multiple and often less visible forms of diversity among ENHANCE participants, including linguistic and cultural diversity, international background, first-generation student status, disability or chronic illness, and queer identification. Participants generally perceive ENHANCE activities as diverse and inclusive and report high levels of perceived equal opportunity to participate. At the same time, perceptions of representation and the involvement of disadvantaged groups appear less pronounced, pointing to areas where inclusion efforts may be less visible.

The paper argues that European university alliances can function as partnership-based spaces that enable inclusive international engagement by lowering barriers to participation and increasing access to transnational opportunities. By providing participant-centred evidence, the study contributes to discussions about the EUI's potential to support diversity and inclusion through alliance-level collaboration.

The European Commission (EC) created the European Universities Initiative (EUI) to encourage cooperation between European Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and their ecosystems. EUI proposes a bottom-up model, where HEI decide with whom to ally and how these connections should be made – provided they can achieve geographical dispersion, in order to bring HEI from peripheral countries or subsystems into the collaboration process. Funded through fixed-sum grants, with expectations of co-funding from participating universities and national governments, the EUI aims to enhance cooperation and excellence (Rensimer and Brooks, 2025).

Portugal, a country on the European periphery, embraced this idea enthusiastically, participating in all 5 calls. Notably the participation of the Public universities, 13 of the 14 institutions engage in an Alliance, even without financial incentive from the Portuguese government (Gogadze et al, 2024).

Drawing on organisational institutionalism, this paper addresses two main questions: (1) what institutional rationales motivate Portuguese public universities to join European University alliances, and (2) what early and perceived institutional implications of EUI integration are observable across universities’ missions (Teaching, Research, and Relationship with Society)?

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 Vice-Rectors, key actors in institutional decision-making across the domains of Teaching, Research and the Relationship with Society. Institutional representatives of 6 Alliances were also interviewed. In total, 9 different Alliances were covered. Interview data were analysed to identify legitimacy-oriented narratives, isomorphic pressures, and variations in institutional logics underpinning participation, as well as emerging patterns of integration across missions.

Preliminary findings indicate that while “collaboration” and “internationalisation” are frequently invoked as motivations, these references often function as a general legitimating discourse. More substantive rationales reveal two distinct patterns consistent with different institutional logics (Scott, 2014). Larger and central universities emphasise status and legitimacy concerns, framing participation as necessary to “…not be left out.” (EUA_H) or “… out of the game…” (EUA_I), in order to protect institutional reputation and brand. Smaller and more peripheral universities frame participation as international positioning and capacity-building, highlighting potential access to shared technical resources (laboratories, IT systems, etc.) and pursuing thematic priorities rooted in their geographical contexts (e.g. ocean-related research, border dynamics, or mountain regions). These patterns suggest that Portuguese institutions integrate EUI simultaneously as legitimacy-seeking strategies and capacity-oriented strategies, varying by institutional profile.

Regarding early implications, interviewees stress it is premature to observe consolidated change, pointing to limited investments, difficulties in harmonizing national legislative contexts, and the slow pace of organisational transformation. Nevertheless, the interviews reveal emerging and uneven patterns of integration across missions. The most visible developments appear in Teaching, particularly around pedagogical innovation, strengthened e‑learning provision, and the development of micro‑credentials — domains in which institutions can more readily create formal structures, coordinate participation, and demonstrate alignment with alliances objectives. In research, interviewees expressed greater reservations: many researchers already maintain strong international network that do not necessarily relate with alliance membership, constraining immediate mission-level change. Even so, the EUI is described as a potential enabler of international opportunities for early-career researchers who have not yet consolidated networks.

In the Relationship with Society the interviewees seldom framed it as a separate mission and instead described it as a cross-cutting, intersecting Teaching and Research: micro-credentials and pedagogical innovations are oriented towards societal challenges, while collaborative research projects are framed in relation to local, regional, or European needs. Interpreted through an institutional lens, these findings are consistent with selective coupling between external expectations and internal practices: universities can more rapidly institutionalise visible teaching-related initiatives, while research integration remains more loosely coupled to alliance membership due to the autonomy of disciplinary networks.

Overall, the paper shows how Portuguese public universities’ participation in the EUI can be understood as legitimacy-oriented action within a Europeanising organisational field, while also reflecting differentiated institutional logics. It provides early evidence on how these rationales align with uneven patterns of integration across missions, with the most visible manifestations concentrated in teaching and learning.

Europe is entering a new geopolitical phase marked by instability, strategic rivalry, technological acceleration and democratic fragility. Geopolitical tensions, digital dependencies, AI dominance by non-European platforms, polarization and disinformation together create what can be described as a nervous society: a condition of permanent urgency, normative uncertainty and structural volatility.

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) operate at the center of this turbulence. At the same time, Europe faces a strategic imperative: if it seeks to function as a more autonomous and resilient continent, it must strengthen its intellectual, technological and democratic sovereignty. Universities are not peripheral actors in this development; they are critical infrastructures of European resilience.

The question, therefore, is not simply how higher education can strengthen trust, but how European higher education can function as a stabilizing, morally responsible and strategically aware institution in a nervous geopolitical context. Trust cannot be proclaimed; it must be earned through reliability, clarity of purpose and institutional courage.

In recent decades, European higher education has increasingly been shaped by efficiency, performance metrics, rankings and throughput optimization. While these developments have improved effectiveness, they have also narrowed the meaning of educational quality. The emphasis on “what works” has often eclipsed the deeper question of what is meaningful.

Education that optimizes measurable outcomes without addressing the moral and societal implications of knowledge risks producing technically competent but ethically unanchored graduates. In a geopolitically volatile Europe, this is a structural weakness.

European history reinforces this concern. The ideal of Bildung—broad intellectual formation—has long defined the university tradition. Yet intellectual sophistication alone does not guarantee democratic responsibility. Societies can be highly educated and still morally disoriented. Bildung without conscience may coexist with moral blindness.

Higher education must therefore move beyond narrow skill training and talent development. Civic and moral formation should be integrated into academic excellence itself. Students should not only be invited to “be themselves,” but challenged to “be a self”: responsible subjects capable of judgment and accountability in complex conditions.

To fulfil this role, higher education must cultivate three interrelated capacities.

First, institutional robustness. Universities must remain reliable under pressure by safeguarding academic freedom, protecting research integrity, securing digital infrastructures and maintaining clear academic standards. In times of acceleration, intellectual depth and methodological rigor are democratic safeguards. Trust grows when institutions demonstrate consistency and principled leadership.

Second, adaptive capacity. Robustness without adaptability leads to rigidity. Universities must respond to AI transformation, geopolitical shifts and societal change. Yet adaptation must occur within explicit normative frameworks. The decisive question is not only what is efficient, but what is responsible in light of higher education’s democratic mission. Adaptation without moral orientation weakens trust; adaptation grounded in shared values strengthens it.

Third, civic and moral competence. Higher education must prepare graduates who understand power structures, technological influence and democratic fragility. Ethical reflection and democratic literacy should be embedded across disciplines. Engineers, economists, AI developers and health professionals alike must confront the societal consequences of their expertise. Students should repeatedly face the question: what responsibilities follow from your knowledge?

These capacities are especially urgent as Europe seeks greater strategic autonomy. Universities operate within global power structures that shape research, technology and funding. A geopolitically naïve understanding of academic neutrality is no longer sufficient. Without becoming politicized instruments, HEIs must acknowledge their role in strengthening democratic resilience and reducing strategic dependency.

Strengthening trust between higher education and society therefore requires a broader conception of quality. Trust deepens when universities show that they are not merely service providers in a competitive knowledge market, but formative institutions committed to intellectual depth, ethical seriousness and democratic responsibility.

In a nervous Europe, higher education cannot eliminate uncertainty, but it can provide counterforce. When society accelerates, universities must protect reflection. When discourse polarizes, they must model complexity. When technology obscures responsibility, they must clarify it. When geopolitics destabilizes, they must anchor democratic confidence.

Higher education thus becomes more than a producer of knowledge. It becomes infrastructure for European resilience: robust without rigidity, adaptive without opportunism, critical without cynicism and morally serious without moralizing. In doing so, it strengthens the trust upon which democratic societies—and an autonomous Europe—ultimately depend.