EUEduPol explores how EU policy instruments (PIs) influence higher education. Although education remains primarily a national competence, national governments and higher education institutions engage with PIs as they provide financial incentives in return for meeting specific performance targets, challenging education's traditional role in nation-state building and raising concerns about politicisation and academic autonomy. Focusing on two EU PIs, the European Semester and Recovery and Resilience Facility, EUEduPol analyses how PIs define national higher education policy outcomes, related policy discourses and measurement practices. The research employs a novel methodological approach that combines AI-based natural language processing of large-scale EU policy documents with elite interviews. In addition, the project will develop and publish an open-access database that will be available for reuse by the wider scholarly community.

2026

2030