4EU+ was established in 2017 in response to the European Commission's call to strengthen university collaboration across borders. In 2019, 4EU+ was selected by the European Commission as a pilot in the new Erasmus+ action 'European Universities'. Today, the shared commitment to collaborate intensively on research, education and administration has become tangible for both students and staff.
For Kathrine Bruun Funch, 4EU+ Programme Coordinator at the University of Copenhagen, a clear effect of the 4EU+ mobility programme and the shared commitment to collaborate, is the significant increase in mobilities between the 4EU+ member universities. Numbers have tripled compared to Erasmus+ mobilities between the same universities in past years.
An important factor behind the increased mobility is the format of the 4EU+ agreements. They are university-wide and involve a broad spectrum of faculties and departments in contrast to the department-specific Erasmus agreements. An example is the UCPH agreement with the University of Milan, explains Kathrine Bruun Funch, which has gone from being a single departmental Erasmus agreement with restricted eligibility to a 4EU+ university-wide agreement with more mobility options. As a result, student mobility between Milan and Copenhagen has grown significantly in 2021-22, and the University of Milan has become one the most desired 4EU+ study destinations amongst students from all faculties at UCPH.
Photo by Kim Vadsk
As Prorector Bente Stallknecht says, "the explicit ambition behind 4EU+ is to take international university collaboration and co-creation to the next level." A collaboration that "should be comprehensive, covering all missions of a university, and unlocking synergies and true transformation of how we do things in our daily university business."
Unlocking collaborative synergies
While 4EU+ gives UCPH students access to a wide range of Educational Projects , 4EU+ course offerings and MOOCs, there is one project in particular that seems to embody the unlocking of collaborative synergies envisioned by 4EU+: The Urban Health Case Challenge.
Created and initiated by UCPH in 2016 as a yearly Global Health Case Challenge, the format and structure of the course was successfully adapted into a 4EU+ Urban Health Case Challenge (UHCC) in 2020 - with the aim of addressing the many urban changes in relation to health and demographic transformation in our growing urban environments. With a multidisciplinary team and special focus on community resilience in times of the pandemic, the 2020 UHCC invited students to solve a real-world urban challenge together with 70 students from eight different universities across Europe.
The focus of the 2021 4EU+ UHCC was mental health, but the trans-institutional format, the multidisciplinary approach and the core premise of creating a space for innovation and active student involvement remained the same.
As such, the 4EU+ UHCC is an example of what 4EU+ and the European University Action is also about: Making space for alternative course offerings, creativity and synergy through mobility and cooperation.
By Alexandra Osorio Brito and Sara Dinesen
