Policy Brief

This policy brief translates the project's empirical and theoretical findings into actionable recommendations for European and national policymakers working on higher education, research governance, and AI in science. Drawing on inputs from over 100 interlocutors across Europe and North America, and grounded in the project's framework of four moral-epistemic configurations of the contemporary university, the brief argues that current policy frameworks mobilise too narrow a vision of what universities are for, and that this selective emphasis is itself a driver of institutional crisis. It sets out six concrete recommendations addressing mission clarity, academic freedom, AI governance, research evaluation, researcher precarity, epistemic diversity, and institutional imagination.