Bologna trundles on…

Abstract

European efforts to achieve some standardisation in university qualifications to help mobility of students and staff — the Bologna process — move on slowly but steadily as other institutions embrace the idea. Nigel Williams reports. European efforts to achieve some standardisation in university qualifications to help mobility of students and staff — the Bologna process — move on slowly but steadily as other institutions embrace the idea. Nigel Williams reports. An increasingly globalised graduate workforce is putting increasing pressure on universities to create unified, portable qualifications. Europe responded in 1999 with a plan to create a European higher education area and increase the mobility of students, researchers and university staff by 2010. The Bologna process, as it is called after the city where the plan was first agreed, is a voluntary intergovernmental agreement aimed at helping Europe's universities achieve just this, partly by greater use of both qualification frameworks and credits. The 45 signatory states decide the priorities rather than the European Commission, although the commission does fund projects that come out of the Bologna process, and it has representatives on the body that helps to move the scheme along. But progress is sometimes slow, given the diversity of institutions. One key issue is the credit system for university qualifications. The Commission's European Credit Transfer and Accumulation Scheme is widely used, but it is seen as too prescriptive and focused on workload, rather than learning outcomes, by some institutions. But Tony Ashmore, education director at the UK's Royal Society of Chemistry, highlights the problems of those institutions failing to follow the Bologna lead. He said: “Most of the rest of continental Europe has moved to a system of BA after three years and two-year programmes to masters and then a further three years to PhD. There's concern about the competitiveness of our masters graduates and how employers will perceive them.” UK higher education institutes are lobbying to get the commission to accept the idea of credits based on learning outcomes rather than length of study. But within the UK, Scottish and Welsh universities are already implementing credit systems compatible with the European Commission's system. The Bologna process objectives enthuse many people. George Winckler, president of the European University Association, believes it is already bearing fruit. “Bologna, although a voluntary process underpinned neither by a new treaty nor by any new bureaucracy, has produced great change in higher education in a short space of time, shattering myths that the sector is slow to respond to new social demands,” he says. Other moves are helping to galvanise the process such as that by Melbourne University (see next feature). And other universities are seeking to harmonise and internationalise their courses. The University of Colorado at Boulder, Dublin City University and the University of Woollagong in Australia have teamed up to offer a BSc degree in international science. Part of the project involves regular video conferencing between students on the three campuses as a way of developing international perspectives on international scientific issues. But establishing the programme, like the Bologna process, was not without its difficulties. Creating an agreed syllabus and forms of assessment that can be used across three different higher education systems has proved difficult. The degree plan was almost abandoned soon after the universities first got together, but now several other universities have asked if they can get involved too. “Few ministers who gathered in Bologna in 1999 to sign the declaration imagined they were setting in motion a reform movement that would have such dramatic impact and lead to a higher education area by 2010”, says Winckler. “Yet this is now within our grasp.”