Across Europe, higher education governance has increasingly been structured through competitive funding regimes, ranking logics, audit cultures, and performance systems. These arrangements are justified in the language of efficiency, excellence, responsiveness, and accountability. Yet their cumulative effects are more ambivalent than policy rhetoric suggests. Competitive steering can intensify institutional rivalry, encourage duplication of programmes and infrastructures, narrow institutional missions, and weaken incentives for collaboration across higher education institutions (HEIs). It can also shift public attention toward measurable outputs at the expense of wider civic and democratic contributions. In this context, trust between HEIs, governments, and society becomes more fragile: HEIs are expected to solve complex societal problems, while their governance environments often reward positional advantage over capability building.

This paper argues that these tensions can be understood through the lens of a Human Capability Economy. In such an economy, the value of higher education does not lie only in producing graduates for labour markets, research outputs for innovation systems, or reputational signals for global competition. More fundamentally, its value lies in enhancing human capabilities, understood as the genuine freedoms of people, communities, and institutions to learn, participate, deliberate, innovate, and act together. Drawing on the capability approach, higher education governance scholarship, and public value theory, the paper reframes HEIs as institutions whose legitimacy depends not only on performance but on their capacity to enlarge civic agency, support democratic resilience, and contribute to inclusive development. From this perspective, the question is not whether competition should disappear, but how governance can move beyond competition as the coordinating logic.

The paper therefore asks: how can higher education governance support institutional autonomy while also creating the conditions for structured cooperation oriented toward public value? To answer this question, the contribution develops a conceptual-comparative framework for post-competitive governance and applies it to European reform trajectories. The analysis engages policy developments associated with performance-based funding, excellence initiatives, regional innovation agendas, and cross-institutional alliances, with particular attention to how these arrangements shape the balance between competition, collaboration, and inclusion. A comparative European lens is important because governance reforms have not unfolded uniformly: some systems have intensified market-like incentives, others have preserved stronger coordinating capacities, and many now combine competitive and collaborative instruments in hybrid ways. Examining these patterns comparatively helps clarify which governance designs enable cooperation without collapsing diversity or academic autonomy.

On this basis, the paper advances three interrelated governance shifts. First, it proposes a move from competitive incentives to cooperative frameworks. This includes funding instruments that reward joint degree provision, shared digital learning platforms, collaborative doctoral training, inter-university research infrastructures, and regional knowledge alliances linking HEIs with municipalities, employers, and civil society organizations. Such frameworks do not abolish excellence; rather, they recognize that many forms of excellence are produced relationally and depend on coordination. Second, the paper argues for moving from narrow performance metrics to broader public value indicators. Alongside output measures such as graduation rates, publication counts, and external income, governance systems should assess inclusion, fairness in student progression, regional contribution, institutional trust, and the capacity of HEIs to widen participation in social problem solving. Third, the paper calls for a shift from linear knowledge transfer to capability circulation. Instead of imagining knowledge as something produced inside HEI' and then transferred outward, capability circulation emphasizes continuous co-creation among HEIs, public authorities, firms, and communities.

The argument is thus not anti-competition but post-competitive. Competition may still stimulate initiative and differentiation, but it becomes counterproductive when it displaces the cooperative capacities needed to address demographic change, technological disruption, democratic polarization, climate transition, and regional inequality. Governance leaders therefore face a strategic design challenge: to create incentive systems, accountability models, and partnership architectures that preserve plurality while rewarding meaningful collaboration. By positioning governance within a Human Capability Economy, the paper offers a normative and practical contribution to debates on the future of European higher education. It provides a language for reconnecting autonomy, inclusion, and public purpose, while identifying governance mechanisms through which cooperation can be institutionalized without erasing identity. The paper concludes that the long-term legitimacy of higher education in Europe will depend less on its success in competition alone than on its capacity to expand human capabilities and generate public value through coordinated, trustworthy, and socially embedded action.

Suitability assessments, or assessments of fitness to practice, are used across higher education systems to evaluate whether students display behaviour that may signal future professional misconduct (Olsen et al., 2023). Their primary purpose is to safeguard users of, e.g., teaching, health, and social work services from potential harm.

Assessments may concern breaches of trust, lack of professional judgement and conduct threatening the safety and dignity of service users. While the objective, protecting vulnerable individuals, is widely endorsed, the operationalization of “unsuited behaviour” is complex. Evaluators, such as lecturers and practical training supervisors, must interpret specific incidents or behavioural patterns considering some (potentially different) notions of suitability.

Research highlights the importance of clear guidelines (Currer & Atherton, 2008), yet even where assessment procedures are formalized, consistency remains difficult to achieve (Naustdal & Gabrielsen, 2015). Detailed operationalizations that are valid across all contexts are rarely feasible (Wiborg, 2025). Moreover, evaluators may experience tension between their dual roles as educators and professional gatekeepers.

Assessment may result in substantially altered educational trajectories for students. Moreover, if similar cases are treated differently across institutions, disciplines, or evaluators, questions arise about equity. Despite the high stakes for students and wider society, research on fitness to practice assessments remains limited compared to other forms of academic assessment (Finch & Corrie, 2024).

In Norway, suitability assessments are governed by national legislation specifying common criteria for identifying unsuited student behaviour across a wide range of educations. At the same time, the criteria remain sufficiently vague to allow interpretation, leaving room for discretionary judgement (see Wiborg, 2025). The Norwegian case therefore offers a valuable opportunity to examine how standardized criteria are interpreted across an entire sector.

In the research project called Suited, we investigate both what shapes suitability assessments and how they vary. We will employ a large-scale survey experiment targeting lecturers and practical training supervisors in Norwegian higher education. In contrast to prior research, which has mainly relied on observational designs or small-scale case studies, our approach enables systematic estimation of how specific factors affect evaluators’ decisions.

Respondents will be presented with fictitious student scenarios in which we randomly vary key elements. These include behavioural evidence (e.g., severity and frequency of conduct) and judgement-context factors such as outcome information, the suitability criteria, and student demographics. Random assignment allows us to identify the average causal effects of these factors. For example, does making formal criteria more salient reduce reliance on contextual cues? Do demographic characteristics influence assessments when behavioural evidence is held constant?

A second strand of the project focuses on variation in assessments. A substantial interdisciplinary literature shows that evaluators often disagree even when assessing identical cases under shared criteria. Some disagreement reflects random noise while other differences may be systematic. We examine how variation in assessment of fictitious cases is structured by organizational and professional context. Institutional affiliation proxies shared routines and informal norms; field of expertise captures professional culture; and knowledge and experience reflect dimensions of evaluator expertise. We also assess whether agreement increases in high-severity cases, where signals are clearer, and decreases in marginal cases characterized by ambiguity.

We will present an overview of the Norwegian system of suitability assessments, the experimental design, and planned analyses. Data collection is scheduled for 2027, and feedback is more than welcome at the time of the conference.

The preparation of students to act as full participants in internal quality assurance processes presents a distinctive pedagogical challenge: while students bring an essential experiential perspective, they must rapidly acquire the evaluative confidence, procedural literacy and professional voice required to operate alongside senior academic and professional staff. This paper outlines an evolving training model developed at University College Cork (UCC) that combines curated digital resources with a generative-AI simulation to support students undertaking the role of Student Reviewer within formal quality reviews of internal academic, research and professional service internal units.

Participation of students as full peer-review panel members is described as unique within the Irish university sector, with the role embedded in the university’s internal review processes since 2014. This model positions students as active evaluators who are full members of a review panel contributing to panel findings and enhancement recommendations. The approach reflects an institutional commitment to a “student-centred, inclusive and digitally enhanced learning environment” articulated in the university’s Strategy: Securing Our Future 2023-28.

Student reviewers are expected to undertake tasks that include critically evaluating documentation, engaging in peer dialogue, exercising leadership to influence outcomes, and contributing directly to review reports. These expectations require core competencies in critical analysis, questioning, professional communication and confidence in interdisciplinary discussion that are not typically developed through standard curricular activity.

To bridge this preparation gap, UCC’s Quality Enhancement Unit designed a blended training ecosystem consisting of three complementary components. First, a dedicated SharePoint hub consolidates guidance materials, procedural documentation and annotated excerpts from previous quality reviews. These artefacts allow students to practise analysing authentic review evidence and responding to structured prompts designed to assess their developing critical-evaluation competency. By engaging directly with curated materials based on previous Self-Evaluation Reports and panel outputs - students begin to interpret institutional language and identify themes of commendation, recommendation and enhancement.

Second, a suite of short asynchronous videos introduces the quality review cycle and clarifies expectations of panel participation. These “micro-learning” videos provide just-in-time guidance, supporting self-regulated learning and reducing cognitive load during training (Monib et al., 2025).

At UCC, quality review is understood as a cyclical process beginning with internal unit self-evaluation, followed by peer-review site visits and reporting; culminating in enhancement planning and follow-up. The videos therefore focus not only on procedural knowledge but also on helping students understand how evidence informs enhancement-focused dialogue rather than audit-style inspection. The design draws on contemporary research highlighting the value of partnership-based quality processes (Healey, Flint and Harrington, 2019) and the importance of authentic, practice-oriented learning environments that enable students to develop evaluative judgement (Tai et al., 2018).

The third and most recent innovation is the introduction of a persona-based AI simulation developed using generative AI tools from Microsoft. The AI agent is configured to role-play a Head of an academic unit, enabling students to rehearse the interpersonal realities of panel engagement. Rather than interacting individually, students work in teams to formulate a single evaluative question for the agent, mirroring the collaborative preparation typical of peer-review panels. Each group then analyses not only the AI’s response to their own question, but also responses generated by questions posed by other teams.

This structured comparison stage is central to the pedagogy. Students evaluate the effectiveness of questioning strategies, identify where lines of enquiry could be strengthened and propose follow-up questions that would deepen evidence-based discussion. In doing so, they practise translating documentary analysis into dialogic engagement - shifting from “reading about quality” to enacting it.

This conversational simulation element reflects growing evidence that AI-supported role-play and dialogue systems can enhance experiential learning, feedback literacy and learner confidence when carefully aligned to pedagogical goals, all important learning outcomes for student reviewers (Luckin et al., 2022; Holmes and Tuomi, 2022).

This paper argues that combining documentary engagement, multimedia orientation, and AI-mediated role-play creates a scalable framework for preparing students to act as credible partners in quality enhancement. It concludes by considering the transferability of this approach to other institutions seeking to embed student partnership more substantively within quality assurance and enhancement while maintaining rigorous preparation for the responsibilities such participation entails.