European Embeddedness and the Founding of Luxembourg’s 21st Century Research University

At the heart of Western Europe and culturally embedded in the “Greater Region,” Luxembourg for centuries sent its youth abroad for tertiary education, without its own national university. Evolving provisions of postsecondary education after 1945 followed construction of several teaching and research institutes that did not offer full-fledged tertiary education certification. With global higher education expansion and European developments providing a window of opportunity, the critical juncture occurred in 2003, with the founding of the national flagship University of Luxembourg (uni.lu)—since leading to an extraordinary case of university institutionalization. Traditions were explicitly maintained, but reshaped, in the new university, with student mobility continuing to bolster the national elite’s pan-European networks and internationalization. Reflecting its hyper-diversity and multilingual culture as well as porous national borders, Luxembourg’s investments in higher education capacity-building, via a 21st century research university, have been thoroughly European. Today, Luxembourg has the highest proportion of workers with tertiary attainment and of internationally mobile students, testament to its maintained mobility tradition and national policy change facilitated by global models and European norms.