Europe invests in research but underinvests in forming researchers

Europe has built one of the most sophisticated research policy systems in the world. Through Horizon Europe, the European Research Council and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, it supports frontier research, mobility, scientific careers and world-class infrastructures. Universities are assessed through publications, citations, grants, patents and broader measures of impact.

This architecture has strengthened research excellence across the continent. Yet one crucial stage of the research pipeline remains comparatively underdeveloped in policy and institutional design: the moment when students first learn to participate in the creation of knowledge. If Europe wishes to remain a global knowledge power, it should devote greater strategic attention to the earliest phase of researcher formation.

In many policy discussions, researcher development is assumed to begin at doctoral level. By then, however, many decisive trajectories have already been set. Students become researchers not simply by attending lectures, but by designing questions, collecting evidence, interpreting results and communicating findings. Undergraduate research should therefore be seen not as an optional enrichment activity, but as a strategic component of Europe’s research ecosystem. It is where curiosity becomes methodological competence, and academic learning begins to turn into scientific vocation.

This is where two major European agendas should meet. The European Education Area and the European Research Area are both ambitious frameworks, yet they often operate in parallel rather than as an integrated continuum. Undergraduate research offers a clear way to connect them: it links research-based learning with the long-term development of scientific capacity, strengthening Europe’s future pipeline of researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs.

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Programmes such as the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions already provide outstanding support for doctoral and postdoctoral researchers through mobility, training and international collaboration. But they come after a crucial formative stage is passed. Such programmes support researchers once they have entered the profession.

This matters for Europe’s competitiveness agenda. Critical technologies, innovation ecosystems and strategic autonomy all depend on people capable of producing reliable knowledge under complex and uncertain conditions. Researchers are not generated by funding programmes. They are formed over many years through mentorship, institutional culture and early participation in genuine inquiry.

The problem is not the absence of support for students and doctoral candidates, according to the Młoda Nauka report. Many instruments exist. The problem is that they are often fragmented, unevenly accessible and too dependent on local conditions, individual mentors or informal paths to information and resources. The system works best where several elements appear together: predictable funding for young researchers’ projects, development of project competences, teamwork, international exposure, visible institutional support and transparent recognition of achievement. Where one element is missing, research activity becomes more selective, accidental and unequal.

At Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (NCU) we have worked to address this problem not through a single new scheme, but by building a more coherent institutional pipeline for early researcher formation, thanks to funding support from the Polish Excellence Initiative – Research University IDUB programme. This is one of the most important dimensions of our cultural transformation: a move from isolated opportunities to a structured environment in which students and doctoral candidates can begin to act as researchers earlier, more independently and with clearer institutional support.

The most visible support mechanism has been Grants4NCUStudents, a competitive scheme supporting student and doctoral research projects, conference participation and academic competitions. This funded more than 550 applications, supporting 249 students and 293 doctoral candidates between 2020 and 2025. The funded projects have resulted in almost 50 publications in high-quality journals and one patent application. This gives students something that conventional curricula rarely provide: experience of designing a project, applying for funding, managing resources, presenting results and taking responsibility for research outcomes.

But research funding alone is not enough. It has to be connected to training, mobility and mentorship. We therefore developed advanced research-oriented courses and extended tracks in fields such as chemistry, mathematics, physics and astronomy. These courses go beyond the standard curriculum and develop specialist knowledge as well as broader research competences: teamwork, scientific communication and dissemination of results.

An international dimension is provided through our institutional mobility programme which awarded 140 scholarships between 2022 and 2025, to support students undertaking study periods, internships and short research projects abroad. The Toruń Students Summer Program offers another entry point into research, enabling 379 international students from more than 30 countries to carry out short research internships under the supervision of our academics, with access to laboratories, seminars and interdisciplinary lectures.

Efforts extend beyond undergraduate education. We have strengthened doctoral support through four-year scholarships, stipend increases, mobility funding, publication support and academic writing workshops. While the CO-OP programme connects students with employers, showing that research formation and labour-market relevance can work in tandem.

The broader lesson is that institutional culture changes when these instruments begin to reinforce one another. Student grants without mentoring remain limited. Advanced courses without research practice remain abstract. Mobility without institutional follow-up becomes episodic. But when funding, curriculum, mobility, supervision, internationalisation and recognition are connected, students encounter research not as a distant aspiration reserved for doctoral training, but as a practice they can enter while still studying. This is why undergraduate research is not simply an additional programme. 

European research policy has been successful in rewarding excellence. The next step is to invest with equal seriousness in the formation of the people who will sustain it. This requires embedding research experiences early in degree programmes, recognising mentorship as a core academic responsibility, connecting teaching and research more systematically, and treating student participation in research as an institutional priority rather than as a peripheral activity.

Adam Kola is vice-rector for research at Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland. He is also vice-president at YERUN: Young European Research Universities Network.