Higher education governance and its autonomy is strongly enhanced by effective and convincing accountability, transparency and financial sustainability. Discussions on the university governance and autonomy throughout HEIs in Europe are coming as a response to diverse challenges in the different country’s context.

As a result, the need for gaining and enhancing public trust in higher education became manifest to develop appropriate forms of transparency and accountability of both public and private institutions. An initiative to form a consortium came as a response to address these challenges through the project Strengthening university autonomy and increasing accountability and transparency of Western Balkans Universities /STAND project.