EU Commission and EU policy-makers see UAS as key institutions in Europe's research and technology development

More than 250 UAS researchers from over 20 countries, non-university research institutions, EU organisations and numerous national representatives met at the beginning of the week at the networking conference of UAS4EUROPE at the Bavarian Representation in Brussels. The main objectives of the conference: dialogue with politicians and the expansion of research networks in order to be even more successful in applying for EU funding in the future. This is because politicians see universities of applied sciences as the driving technological force for tackling the major challenges in areas such as energy, climate, food and security.

Role model in the generation of application-oriented knowledge

Angelika Niebler, Member of the European Parliament, made it clear that Europe must create good framework conditions for UAS, as they are the ones who bring research results to the point where they can be used to generate economic added value. Europe needs to make progress in this area as quickly as possible and this requires universities such as the UAS, which are a role model both in the practice-orientated qualification of people and in the generation of new application-orientated knowledge.

Netherlands funds UAS research with an additional 100 million euros per year

In his keynote speech, the Dutch Federal Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Robert Dijkgraaf, emphasised that the division between basic research and application-oriented research was outdated and would get us nowhere. Instead, we need to work together, preferably in multi-disciplinary teams. UAS do excellent work and it is important to anchor them better and more sustainably in the consortia of the EU framework programmes. To this end, he had provided the Dutch UAS with an additional 100 million euros per year for research.

UAS are important cooperation partners

For Anton Walsdorf, Senior Strategist at Airbus, UAS are indispensable, unique co-operation partners in the field of knowledge generation and innovation transfer, as they manage to transfer new knowledge and new technologies into business models.

Expand and increasingly promote UAS

Pernille Weiss, Member of the European Parliament, expressed her concern about Europe's declining economic growth and low innovation rate. She said it was high time to take action here and that this naturally included promoting and expanding universities, such as the UAS, as they play such an important role in value creation and innovation transfer in Europe.

All these messages were then reiterated on the second day of the conference in the keynote speech by Martina Hirayama, the Swiss State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation, who emphasised once again that UAS must be strengthened as key players in the European innovation network.

Areas of strength of the UAS

At the end of the conference, the results from various working groups were presented to the EU Commission. UAS are well embedded in their regional environment and orientate their research towards its needs. This is why they have a particularly strong impact here. Their great strength is also their close partnership with the SME sector and industry, which has been massively expanded over the last few decades. In general, companies are also investing more than ever in their research, as technological progress is a key competitive advantage. Thanks to their high organisational flexibility in research and teaching, UAS can react quickly to new developments and offer technological solutions in a timely manner.

Massimiliano Esposito from the EU Commission's Directorate-General for Research confirmed these areas of strength and emphasised that UAS and UAS4EUROPE should be well integrated into the interim evaluation of the current "Horizon Europe" framework programme as well as into the subsequent programme.

Many current developments at European level must now also be implemented in Austria if we do not want to lose touch with the European leaders. In Austria in particular, it is important to improve the framework conditions for universities of applied sciences and to provide them with sustainable research funding from the federal government. "The potential of universities of applied sciences in research and technology development is currently not being fully utilised. If more federal funding were to be channelled into universities of applied sciences, this would have a direct effect on value creation, as is the case in other European countries. This is an opportunity that Austria must also seize," says FHK President Ulrike Prommer.

About UAS4EUROPE

UAS4EUROPE is a joint initiative of swissuniversities, Hochschule Bayern e.V., EURASHE, University Colleges Denmark, Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences, Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences (ARENE), Hochschulen für Angewandte Wissenschaften Baden-Württemberg e.V., Hochschulallianz für den Mittelstand and Österreichische Fachhochschul-Konferenz (FHK). The initiative is committed to strengthening and increasing the visibility of universities of applied sciences (UAS) in the European research landscape. UAS4EUROPE represents 2.3 million students, more than 60,000 researchers and more than 450 universities in 24 European countries.