The Opportunity of Linked Data for the European Higher Education Area

Abstract

The european higher education area (EHEA) aims to create a more comparable, compatible and coherent space of Higher Education in Europe. After a decade of reforms, most of the required instruments are already in place, so the next years are key to complete the implementation and consolidation of the EHEA. However, data challenges pose a threat to pivotal EHEA processes such as credit recognition that require institutions to cooperate and integrate their datasets scattered across diverse repositories in multiple data formats. Linked Data principles and practices have the potential to address such difficulties, as demonstrated with the emergence of a global data space –the Web of Data. This paper first discusses the benefits of Linked Data for the emergent EHEA, devising a new set of Linked Data-driven scenarios that leverage current EHEA processes. Further, a set of preliminary Linked Data deployments is examined to assess the advantages and identify the challenges ahead in the EHEA landscape.