TEFCE: Towards a European Framework for Community Engagement of Higher Education

The TEFCE project will directly contribute to this new agenda by proposing a framework for a common European approach to community engagement in higher education. The project will first take stock of existing research and initiatives that have attempted to measure the community engagement of universities. The project will then develop a “toolbox” that could assist universities and policymakers at the EU level in fostering greater community engagement and that could provide a meaningful measurement of an institution’s level of community engagement.

The project’s expert team will include researchers from the University of Twente (Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies), University of Ghent (Centre for Higher Education Governance Ghent), Dublin Institute of Technology, University of Rijeka (Faculty of Philosophy) and the Institute for the Development of Education. Universities and local authorities from the cities of Dresden (Germany), Dublin (Ireland), Enschede (Netherlands) and Rijeka (Croatia) will be piloting the developed toolbox, and additional expertise will be provided by the European Consortium of Innovative Universities, the Global University Network for Innovation (represented by the Catalan Association of Public Universities) and the Public Policy and Management Institute from Lithuania.

The specific objective of the project ‘Towards a European Framework for Community Engagement of Higher Education’ (TEFCE) is to develop innovative and feasible policy tools at the university and European level for supporting, monitoring and assessing the community engagement of universities. The project has two sub-objectives:

1. To develop and pilot an innovative toolbox (including specific measures for guidance, assessment and peer-learning) on the community engagement of universities
2. To assess the feasibility of launching innovative tools for policymakers and stakeholders to monitor, measure and incentivise community engagement of universities at the European level

• Innovative and user-friendly toolbox for universities to plan and/or self-assess their community engagement
• Relevance and quality of toolbox tested and confirmed by universities, local governments and experts
• Recommendations on innovative solutions for policymakers and stakeholders at the European level to monitor, measure and incentivise community engagement in higher education
• Support received by key stakeholders at the European level as a basis for influencing the European policy agenda and for sustainability
• Raised visibility among key stakeholders at the European level of the importance of community engagement and of the project’s objectives and  results