This special issue emerges from The Role of European Universities in an Age of Pandemic, an exploratory project in which research teams from eight countries (Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, and Portugal) examined the multiple effects of the COVID-19 crisis on higher education. Drawing on documents, surveys, national statistics and 130 interviews with policy-makers, institutional leaders, academics, support staff and students, the project sought to capture both immediate responses to the pandemic and their longer-term implications for the future of European universities. Our exploratory study pursued two central objectives: first, to analyse the impact of the pandemic at both system and institutional levels; and second, to understand how different stakeholders’ perceptions and reactions during the crisis – across education, research and societal engagement – shaped emerging visions of the future. In doing so, we aimed not only to trace the immediate consequences of the pandemic but also to situate them within pre-existing structural conditions that already shaped European higher education.

Universities, as public organisations, exemplify three competing institutional logics regarding governance. First, the state wields considerable control over universities through a Weberian bureaucratic logic. Second, university managers have been granted increased autonomy under a neoliberal, managerial logic. Third, a traditional academic logic involves a high degree of self-regulation and peer control. The country-specific ways in which this balance has been achieved come under pressure in times of crisis, such as the pandemic. In this article, we explore how the challenge of managing an unprecedented crisis has affected higher education systems and institutions and how the balance between the three logics has developed before, during and after the crisis. To this end, we adopt a comparative approach and analyse four different European higher education systems: Denmark, France, Portugal and Germany. The analysis reveals that paths of governance that weaken the academic logic were reinforced during the pandemic as university leadership reacted to the crisis by enacting top-down decision-making processes.

This article discusses the sustainability of higher education internationalisation and changing practice during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. While many previous studies frame the understanding of sustainable internationalisation within the discourse of environmental and financial sustainability, we view the sustainability of internationalisation in terms of ‘educational sustainability’ – a developmental process that is characterised by new paradigms, policies, purposes and practice of internationalisation, and its adequacy for the post–COVID-19 era. Our study draws upon the thematic analysis of a wide range of academic literature, national and institutional policy documents and sixty interviews in six universities in England and Hungary. Conceptually, we argue that sustainable internationalisation beyond the pandemic is about prioritising making education itself authentic and sustainable, realising human potential and building social capacity. In practical terms, such authentic education must be rooted in place and tradition, open and participatory, and must not be industrialised and commercialised.

In this article, we explore the European post-pandemic higher education. Drawing from our research and experiences in Finnish and Irish higher education systems, we discuss how the post-pandemic higher education might, ideally, look. We base our work on the concepts of care and power-as-empowerment and influence. First, we envision an ideal post-pandemic university, inspired by previous literature. We then problematise the role of individual academics in shaping the university, acknowledging the limitations of individual efforts. Empirically, we draw on existing research on COVID-19 and care, our own work, and experiences of working in several European universities before, during, and after the pandemic. Our article balances between hope and despair about higher education's future, emphasising the importance of collectively working towards creating a more sustainable, respectful and caring university.

The shift to remote learning during the pandemic posed significant challenges for lecturers and higher education institutions in maintaining student engagement. In this research, two interconnected aspects are explored: first, what were the pre-existing conditions that either facilitated or hindered the integration of technology in European higher education during the pandemic. Second, how did these conditions shape Portuguese students’ perceptions of the flipped classroom model prior to, during, and following the pandemic. The article uses a multi-method research design. The findings underscore the critical influence of pre-existing conditions on the capacity of higher education institutions to implement digital transformation effectively. Within this broader framework, the analysis of the effectiveness of the flipped classroom model reveals that students often value the flexibility, self-directed learning opportunities, and increased interaction afforded by this approach.

Mark A. Carrigan, Hannah Moscovitz, Michele Martini and Susan L. Robertson (2023), Building the Post-Pandemic University: Imagining, Contesting, and Materializing Higher Education Futures Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 328 pp., ISBN: 978-1-80220-456-8