Financial sustainability, increased autonomy, appropriate governing structures and strong management and leadership capacities are key elements in order for universities to fulfil their multiple missions and respond to the current challenges in an increasingly complex and global environment. EUA’s work in these areas aims at developing and advocating common policies for European and national policy makers to provide the conditions and frameworks to establish strong, autonomous, well funded and financially sustainable universities.

University steering and managing is made more complex by factors such as global competition, diversification of missions and activities to respond to new stakeholder demands, and financial strains caused by rising costs and the economic downturn. EUA’s work in this area supports universities in their efforts to improve governance and management structures in order to act more strategically and become more efficient and effective, in particular by identifying ways in which leaders can enhance their steering capacity.

EUA involves member institutions and other relevant organisations active at European level in a series of projects and events in the area of governance, autonomy and funding. This enables EUA to consolidate a broad set of comparable data, the analysis of which underpins EUA's activities supporting public policy development.

Thanks to this work, EUA can provide expertise to decision-makers on topics relevant to universities across Europe, and thus ensure that the sector’s interests are taken into account when decisions affecting universities are being prepared.

EUA’s work analyses each area individually but equally intends to demonstrate the links between governance, autonomy, costing/funding and accountability. 

Learn more about EUA’s Funding Forum, the international stakeholder platform dedicated to universitygovernance and financial sustainability. For more information, check “More in this section” or contact the Governance, Funding & Public Policy Development unit:

• Funding: funding@eua.be
• Autonomy: autonomy@eua.be