CRITHINKEDU derives from the experiences of partners’ institutions and from the need to link higher education institutions with the labor market and society, meeting the needs and challenges of the 21st century in the development of critical thinking skills in students. It aims to: 1) connect Higher Education Institutions (HEI), NGO’s and companies in order to identify curricular goals and outcomes in critical thinking education; 2) characterise current critical thinking education practices among faculty teaching staff in European HEI; 3) propose a quality assurance criteria for the enhancement of critical thinking education in the European HEI; 4) deliver critical thinking training/learning activities for faculty teaching and students from European HEI taking in account the proposal of quality assurance criteria for the enhancement of critical thinking education; and 5) disseminate the need of critical thinking education across the European Higher Education curricula.These goals are endorsed by a consortium of 11 institutions (10 HEIs, 1 NGO) from 9 countries (Portugal, Greece, Lithuania, Italy, Romania, Czech Republic, Spain, Ireland, Belgium) with consolidated backgrounds/ expertise in critical thinking (teaching and research, resources development and extension to the community) and/or in international projects. The project entails 4 main collaborative Work Packages, which contain specific activities, managed according to a participated project plan - led by the proponent partner (UTAD/ Portugal). A “Preliminary proposal of Guidelines/Recommendations for quality-assurance criteria in critical thinking education in HEI” (OUTPUT 2) will address the gaps between the critical thinking skills needed in the labor market (identified by the NGO’s/Companies - OUTPUT 1) and the current teaching practices - we expect up to 50 participating NGO’s/companies in the project. A training course (OUTPUT 3) will be designed to address the “Guidelines/Recommendations for quality-assurance criteria in critical thinking education in HEI”. It will be delivered to partners’ members (at first) and then adapted and extended by these at a local level to interested teaching faculty staff and respective students. These will implement/reinforce critical thinking educational activities in curricula, within the deployment scenarios/case studies in each institution - we expect up to 600 participating higher education students and 40 teachers in the project. The work will end with a large international Boot Camp (EVENT 1) that will challenge students of the participating institutions to approach and solve “real” workplace problems addressing critical thinking skills, developed jointly by the partnership with companies/NGOs. In parallel, the project outcomes and results will be presented, evaluated and publicly discussed in an international meeting/seminar (EVENT 2) that will assemble experts, teachers, EU education bodies representatives, companies and NGOs. A dissemination strategy will ensure the wide penetration of the project outputs at the international and national levels using new and existing (and potential) local/national/ international networks and channels. The two final events will cover the development of the ‘European guidelines/recommendations for critical thinking education in High Education Institutions’ (OUTPUT 4) and the project technical report (OUTPUT 6). A scientific special issue on ‘Critical thinking Education in HEI’ (OUTPUT 5) will be published adding value to the project by disseminating it to the worldwide educational community, attracting new educators, institutions and researchers to join the network and to keep, apply, expand and replicate CRITHINKEDU activities/outputs. The expected Intellectual outputs may consist in relevant tools (due to their potential in terms of transferability and applicability) to guide and support the development of quality higher education curricula reforms, as well as to implement critical thinking projects and initiatives in EU HEIs. This project will be a great opportunity for the involved institutions to develop and implement a holistic internationalisation strategy in the field of critical thinking education, towards the creation of a specific European working group/network, that will bring and link together HEIs, NGO’s/companies, experts, EU decision-makers, and other relevant stakeholders in an endless project - based on a future agenda for further research and development.