Erasmus Mundus MARIHE Scholarship 2027

Imagine beginning your Master's degree in the historic city of Krems, Austria — then continuing your studies in the innovative university city of Tampere, Finland — and then choosing your final semester from a menu of campuses in Germany, Hungary, Portugal, China, or India. Same degree. Same scholarship. Seven countries. One extraordinary academic journey that takes you across continents and gives you a perspective on higher education, research, and innovation that no single-campus program could ever provide.

That is the vision behind the Erasmus Mundus MARIHE Scholarship 2027 — and it is now open for applications.

The Master's in Research and Innovation in Higher Education (MARIHE) is a fully funded, two-year Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's degree program, backed by the full financial support of the European Union and delivered jointly by seven partner universities across Austria, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, China, and India. It is one of the most internationally ambitious postgraduate programs available in the world — and for students passionate about higher education systems, research policy, innovation management, and the future of universities and knowledge institutions, it is without question one of the most relevant and transformative programs they could pursue.

The academic year begins in September 2027 at the University for Continuing Education Krems in Austria. The application deadline is 21 September 2026. Candidates from every country in the world are eligible to apply.

What is Erasmus Mundus? The European Union's Flagship Scholarship

To understand the significance of the MARIHE scholarship, it helps to understand the broader program it sits within. Erasmus Mundus is the European Union's flagship initiative for supporting high-quality joint Master's degree programs delivered by consortia of universities from multiple countries. It is, by any measure, one of the most ambitious and impactful scholarship programs in the world.

The Erasmus Mundus program funds the development and delivery of joint Master's programs that are genuinely collaborative — not simply a foreign exchange component added to an existing degree, but programs that are designed from the ground up to be transnational, where the curriculum, the teaching, the assessment, and the student experience are all built around the principle that moving between countries and academic cultures is not a disruption to learning but its very essence.

The scholarship associated with Erasmus Mundus programs is among the most comprehensive available anywhere in the world. Full tuition fees are covered. A monthly stipend of €1,400 is provided throughout the program to cover accommodation, living expenses, visa costs, travel, and study activities. This single monthly payment is designed to support the full cost of student life across the multiple countries the program takes students through — a genuinely remarkable provision that makes the program financially accessible to students from every background and every country.

The Erasmus Mundus brand also carries enormous international recognition. Employers, academic institutions, and professional communities around the world understand what an Erasmus Mundus degree signifies — a rigorous, internationally validated qualification earned through a genuinely cross-national academic experience. For MARIHE graduates, this recognition opens doors in academia, in international organizations, in education policy institutions, and in the growing ecosystem of organizations that work on research and innovation management globally.

About MARIHE: The Program That Makes Sense of Higher Education

The Master's in Research and Innovation in Higher Education is a program with a specific and fascinating intellectual focus: it examines higher education itself — not as the environment in which you study, but as the subject you study. MARIHE is for people who want to understand how universities work, how research systems are organized and funded, how innovation policies are designed and implemented, and how higher education institutions navigate the complex landscape of global competition, public accountability, and social responsibility.

This might sound like a niche focus — but it is anything but. Higher education is one of the largest and most consequential sectors of the global economy, employing tens of millions of people and shaping the lives and careers of hundreds of millions of students worldwide. Research and innovation — the activities at the core of research-intensive universities — are the primary engines of technological progress and economic development in modern societies. Understanding these systems — how they function, how they fail, how they can be improved — is work of enormous practical importance.

MARIHE's graduates go on to careers in university administration and academic management, research funding agencies, national and regional science and innovation policy bodies, international organizations working on education and development, government ministries responsible for higher education, educational consulting and think tanks, and academic research on higher education systems. The program is unusually clear-eyed about the professional landscape its graduates enter, and its curriculum is designed to equip them with both the theoretical frameworks and the practical tools their careers demand.

The inclusion of partner universities in China and India — alongside the European partners — is a deliberately global dimension of the program's intellectual identity. Higher education systems in Asia have undergone extraordinary transformations in recent decades, with Chinese and Indian universities rising rapidly in global rankings and their governments making massive investments in research and innovation capacity. Understanding these systems alongside the mature European systems provides MARIHE students with a genuinely global perspective on higher education that is rare and increasingly valued.

The Seven Partner Universities: A Global Academic Consortium

The MARIHE program is built on a consortium of seven universities — each chosen for its expertise in higher education research, innovation policy, or related fields, and each contributing a distinct national and institutional perspective to the program's intellectual fabric.

University for Continuing Education Krems, Austria (UWK) serves as the coordinating institution — the administrative and academic hub that holds the consortium together. UWK is Austria's only public university dedicated exclusively to continuing and postgraduate education, making it a particularly fitting home for a program about higher education systems. Krems itself is a beautiful, historic city on the Danube River, just an hour from Vienna — a perfect European starting point for an international academic journey.

Tampere University, Finland (TAU) is one of Finland's largest and most internationally engaged universities, with particular strengths in technology, social sciences, and education research. Finland's higher education system is internationally admired for its quality, equity, and innovation — making Tampere an ideal second home for MARIHE students. The city of Tampere, situated between two lakes in southern Finland, is a vibrant, progressive university city with a strong cultural identity and a genuinely welcoming atmosphere for international students.

Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, Germany (UASO) brings the German perspective on applied research and professional higher education to the consortium. Osnabrück is a charming, historically rich city in Lower Saxony with a strong tradition of academic life and a warm, manageable scale that makes it an excellent environment for focused study.

Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary (ELTE) is Hungary's oldest and most prestigious university, founded in 1635 and located in Budapest — one of Europe's most magnificent capitals. ELTE brings deep expertise in social sciences and education research, as well as access to Budapest's extraordinary cultural and intellectual life.

University of Aveiro, Portugal (UA) is one of Portugal's most innovative and internationally oriented universities, known for its strong research culture and its beautiful lakeside campus. Aveiro — a charming coastal city often called the "Venice of Portugal" for its network of canals — is one of the most distinctive university towns in Europe.

Beijing Normal University, China (BNU) is one of China's most prestigious universities, with particular excellence in education research and teacher training. BNU's inclusion in the MARIHE consortium reflects the program's genuine commitment to engaging with Asia's transformation of higher education — and gives students the option of spending a semester in Beijing, one of the world's great cultural and intellectual capitals.

Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, India (TIET) brings the Indian perspective on technical education and innovation to the consortium. TIET is one of India's leading private technical universities, located in Patiala, Punjab — giving students the option of a semester in one of South Asia's most dynamic educational environments.

The Program Structure: Four Semesters, Multiple Countries

The MARIHE program is structured across four semesters over two years, with each semester at a different location — creating a genuinely mobile academic experience that is central to the program's educational philosophy.

First Semester at UWK, Austria begins the program in Krems in September 2027. This opening semester establishes the theoretical foundations of the program — introducing students to the key concepts, frameworks, and debates in higher education research and innovation management. It is also the semester in which the cohort forms its identity as a community of learners — building the relationships and shared intellectual culture that will sustain the group across two years and multiple countries.

Second Semester at TAU, Finland moves the cohort to Tampere, where the program deepens its engagement with research systems, science policy, and the international dimensions of higher education. Finland's distinctive approach to education — built on equity, trust, and professional autonomy — provides an invaluable contrast to the more bureaucratically structured systems students may be familiar with from their home countries.

Internship and Third Semester — one of the most practically valuable elements of the program — combines a professional internship placement with continued academic study. This period gives students the opportunity to apply what they have learned in a real organizational setting — whether in a university administration, a research funding body, a government ministry, or an international education organization — and to bring the insights from that experience back into their academic work.

Fourth Semester offers students a genuine choice: they can complete their final semester at any one of the seven partner universities — TAU in Finland, UASO in Germany, UWK in Austria, ELTE in Hungary, UA in Portugal, BNU in China, or TIET in India. This choice is both an academic decision — selecting the institution whose expertise most closely aligns with your thesis topic and research interests — and a personal one, reflecting your desire to experience a particular country and culture. It is a freedom that is genuinely rare in graduate education, and it is one of MARIHE's most distinctive and valued features.

Who MARIHE is For: A Program That Rewards Intellectual Curiosity

The MARIHE program is not for everyone — and that specificity is part of its strength. It is designed for a particular kind of student: someone who is genuinely curious about how knowledge is created, organized, and transmitted; someone who wants to understand the institutions and systems that sit at the intersection of education, research, and innovation; and someone who is ready to commit to two years of genuinely international, intellectually demanding postgraduate study.

It is ideally suited for people who are currently working in — or who want to work in — higher education administration, academic management, research policy, science funding, education governance, or related fields. It is also an excellent program for people who are considering academic careers and want to develop a sophisticated understanding of the research and higher education systems within which those careers will unfold.

The program's genuinely global structure — with partners in Europe, China, and India — makes it particularly relevant for students interested in comparative higher education, in the internationalization of universities, in the politics of global rankings and reputation management, or in the specific development of higher education systems in Asia or the Global South.

Living Across Multiple Countries: The Personal Transformation

Beyond the academic program, there is a personal dimension to the MARIHE experience that deserves its own recognition. Spending two years living, studying, and building friendships across Austria, Finland, and one or more additional countries — experiencing different climates, different food cultures, different social norms, different academic traditions — produces a kind of personal growth that is genuinely difficult to achieve any other way.

The MARIHE cohort — a group of students from different countries all moving through the same multi-national program together — becomes a particularly close and enduring community. The shared experience of navigating new cities, adapting to new universities, and supporting each other through the intellectual and personal challenges of a demanding international program creates friendships of real depth and durability. Many MARIHE alumni describe their cohort as among the most important professional and personal networks of their lives.