The challenges in the lately present university alliances working towards European Degree are around the dual logic: a project-based mode driven by short-term milestones and deliverables, and an aspirational vision of becoming a long-term, mission-driven educational ecosystem. This creates friction between administrative coordination and strategic transformation. According to the CULT Committee's evaluation of the European Universities Initiative (EUI), alliances often remain locked in a "project trap," focusing on meeting contractual outputs rather than designing governance structures that endure beyond the funding. To move beyond this short-termism, university alliances require governance models that can support long-term institutional transformation while managing immediate operational demands. Thet must navigate fragmented legal, administrative, and cultural landscapes while pursuing ambitious goals of interoperability, co-creation, and innovation. To support such institutional transformation, some authors propose a view-based Architecture Framework for Higher Education Systems (HES). This approach adapts enterprise architecture (EA) principles - particularly the TOGAF standard - to academic ecosystems and offers structured guidance for aligning governance, strategy, and communication across borders. Higher Education Systems function as complex socio-technical environments composed of diverse actors - students, faculty, administrative staff, policymakers - operating under different national contexts. Our research explores literature, as well as several European university alliances and one in depth, and attempts to argument the rationale for Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education. Our work is towards a reference architecture or "meta-model" that could guide alliance design and effective governance across Europe.
de et al. (Thu,) studied this question.