The architecture for refugee higher education access
Higher education doesn't have a commitment gap on including refugees and responding to crises. Across Europe, institutions have signed pledges, launched scholarships, and sent representatives to most conferences on the subject.
What's missing is the shared architecture for collective action: coordination mechanisms, models of partnership, ready-made networks.
Without it, the pattern is familiar. A scholarship launched in isolation, fragile to staff turnover. An international project without the in-country network to sustain it. A working group that meets once, issues a statement, and disperses.
The wiring of sector coordination that turns commitment into durable action hasn’t been there. So what can institutions do to turn a one-time pledge into a longstanding commitment?
What that architecture looks like in the UK
Earlier this year, the UK Home Office suspended study visas for postgraduate students from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan and Cameroon, closing a route through which around 50 students a year had accessed programmes including Chevening.
For students from these countries, access to higher education is severely constrained by conflict, displacement, and systematic exclusion. A place at a UK higher education institution is one of the few viable options to continue their education.
What happened next is instructive. Within weeks, the gap had been mapped and a collective response had been created. UK institutions were invited to pledge funded places on online or branch campus postgraduate programmes for 2026/27 as an alternative route. More than 30 institutions expressed interest. The sector moved, at pace, together.
This was possible because the shared architecture already existed. The Global Response Platform (GRP), launched by Mosaik in 2025, supports UK higher education institutions to respond to crises. It provides operational infrastructure that sits between institutions and the ecosystem of refugee education: humanitarian partners, in-country networks, and knowledge of how HE access works in these contexts. This saves higher education institutions the resources required to research and understand how to reach displaced students from Afghanistan, Sudan, Cameroon and Myanmar. Sector-wide coordination also allows for efficient capture and sharing of learning on how to implement scholarships for refugees.
When the visa restrictions hit, the GRP absorbed the complexity that would otherwise have defeated individual institutions working alone.
Three things shared architecture makes possible:
- Speed.
- You cannot build coordination infrastructure in response to a crisis. The case for investing now is that it changes what's possible when the need to act arrives. This gives staff responsible for civic or global engagement a clear entry point to learn more and bring ideas back to their institution.
- Complexity absorption.
- The transactions involved in refugee-inclusive partnership, such as last-mile logistics for displaced online learners and contextual understanding, are demanding for any single institution to absorb. Shared infrastructure distributes that load, saving them time and valuable resources.
- Collective legitimacy.
- Thirty institutions acting together changes the conversation with governments and funders in ways that an individual action by an academic or an institution cannot. Making the case for external support and funding is much easier.
The question for HE across Europe
The GRP is a UK network responding to a UK policy context. But the architecture problem is not unique to the UK, and the current moment makes it harder to ignore.
Climate change, conflict and political instability are producing more refugees, more frequently, across more contexts. The policy environments that generate visa brakes, border closures and restricted access routes are increasingly the operating conditions of international higher education across Europe.
There is also a deeper question being asked of higher education by governments, by students, by our own communities. What is the direct response of institutions to these global challenges? Building shared architecture for collective action on refugee inclusion and crisis response is a substantive part of the answer.
If your institution is already doing coordinated work on refugee inclusion in Europe, Mosaik wants to hear from you. Explore the resources, frameworks and coordination tools at mosaik.ngo/globalresponseplatform and reach out.
Three questions to consider: What geographies would your institution prioritise in planning a response displacement and why? Who would your institution speak to first to understand what is needed in a specific context? How would your institution better understand the contextual challenges facing a displaced learner?
I hear from senior higher education leaders time and again that refugee inclusion "fits our values." Higher education's commitment is genuine. What's missing is the shared architecture to act collectively on what that actually means: the where, the what and the how.
