Services catalogue among plans to link student services more closely to the European Student Card

Addressing common challenges

The Business Needs Forum is a key element of the European Student Card (ESC) governance model. The latest meeting in March gathered nine participants representing seven different European Universities alliances and stakeholders who are part of the governance model, and other institutions implementing the European Student Card, including: EC2U, the Erasmus Student Network, EUT+, CIVICA, EPICUR, FORTHEM, and CHARM-EU.

Participants shared experiences and gathered feedback from the members on the opportunities and challenges they have faced when offering and linking access to services for their students through the European Student Card. 

Highlights

Participants highlighted challenges related to a lack of IT resources, such as the lack of QR code scanning hardware and other IT-related aspects related to transitioning to the new API of the ESC-Router.

Despite this, participants expressed enthusiasm about the ESC QR code as a tool to streamline and simplify student status validation. They also expressed interest in the digital ESC as way to facilitate the card’s widespread adoption.

Finally, although some potential challenges were highlighted regarding its maintenance, the participants also cited an interest in an ESC service catalogue that would show available student services accessible to cardholders across institutions in the European Education Area.

Next steps and future collaboration

Defining and developing a service catalogue is one of the priorities for the coming months.

The forum also committed to continue developing user-friendly solutions and brought a strong call for broader institutional adoption of the ESC, thereby promoting the reciprocity principle and institutional cooperation across Europe.