European Associations in Higher Education

The last fifteen years have witnessed a drastic increase in higher education cooperation in Europe. In parallel to this development, the number of European associations in higher education has grown considerably. This article constitutes a first systematic look at these organisms. After providing a working definition, it tries to encapsulate the rationale and the main activities of these associations, followed by a first attempt at a typology. A short history of the European higher education association is combined with an analysis of the links between its large-scale emergence and the provision of higher education cooperation programmes by the European Union. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.