Higher Education and Europe's Recovery in times of crisis: an analysis of National Recovery and Resilience Plans in Southern Europe

This article focuses on the social imaginaries about higher education (HE) and its connection to recovery efforts during times of crisis, with a particular emphasis on the European Union NextGeneration (NGEU) initiative. It addresses the gap in research on National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs), exploring recovery as a platform for advancing education reform, namely creating new roles, expected outcomes and governance principles for HE. The study focuses on NRRPs from four Southern European countries - Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain - conceiving these documents as policy texts. Overall, the paper discusses HE imaginaries and changes in governance to address global social and economic needs in times of crisis. The study reveals not a transformative agenda for HE but rather a consolidation of existing paradigms, namely, reinforcing a transnational narrative about HE as an economic asset.