Ten universities spanning four continents this month established an alliance that aims to go beyond the normal exchange of staff and students. The International Alliance of Research Universities is planning to run joint degree programmes, conferences and research projects as well as pooling resources to share knowledge on the commercialization of research. If successful, the alliance could serve as a model for a more global approach to both higher education and research.

Asia is currently represented by the National University of Singapore, University of Tokyo and Peking University, while the Australian National University recently joined the alliance for Australasia. In Europe, the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Copenhagen are joined by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the group is completed by the University of California, Berkeley, and Yale University. The initial research areas for the alliance include health; food and water; energy and the environment; security; and the global movement of people.

The opportunities offered by the alliance should prove useful for young scientists who want to establish international collaborations early in their career. For example, a student from Peking University could spend time in another country during their graduate studies, then use contacts made abroad to strengthen research projects when they return home.

The ultimate success of the plan may well rest on how easy the alliance makes such mobility and how open such exchanges will be. If topics included in the exchanges are limited to a few areas of research, or focused too much on applied research, then the arrangement will be less useful than if it has a much broader remit.

Whatever the case, it is likely that universities that so far have not signed up will be watching closely to see whether they should join the alliance — or perhaps even establish their own.