Authors: Dr. Natia Zedginidze-Jishkariani/ Dr. Alexander Tevzadze
{09.09.2026}
Higher education is often discussed in terms of rankings, accreditation, research performance, graduate
employability, internationalization, and digital transformation. These issues are unquestionably
important, yet behind every successful university lies something less visible, but fundamental: a system
of values.
On 2-3 June 2026, Erasmus+, through SPHERE, held the seminar “Values in Higher Education: Challenges,
Practices and Perspectives.” The event brought together approximately 60 higher education reform
experts, institutional leaders, higher education policy specialists, and student representatives from the
Eastern Partnership, Central Asia, the Western Balkans, and the Southern Mediterranean countries. This
was one of SPHERE’s most substantively and informationally rich seminars, devoted entirely to the
question of values in higher education.
The seminar once again reminded participants of an important truth: universities cannot fulfil their
educational, research, and societal missions through regulations and procedures alone. They also need
academic freedom, integrity, institutional autonomy, participation, fairness, accountability, and trust.
These values form an integral part of strategic planning, since it is precisely, they that determine how
decisions are made, how knowledge is created, how disagreement is managed, and how universities
respond in different circumstances.
The seminar brought together expertise from three complementary areas: (a) the European University
Association’s (EUA) comparative data on university autonomy; (b) findings from research on the global
decline of institutional autonomy; and (c) a code of ethics governing cooperation among higher
education institutions. Alongside the knowledge, practices, and information shared at the seminar,
useful literature and sources were also made available, offering a fuller picture of the state of higher
education’s core values worldwide today, illustrated with examples from a range of countries. This article
reviews, for a general readership, the information shared at the seminar, drawing on the materials made
available within the event.
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