Bologna Agreement Under attack

Update extracts from University World News

By Makki Marseilles

Education Ministers from 46 countries in Europe will meet in Vienna this week (week 6, 2010) to mark the 10th anniversary of the Bologna Agreement, which proposed a European Higher Education Area where students and graduates could move freely between countries using prior qualifications in one country as acceptable entry requirements for further study in another.

Undoubtedly a great deal of progress has been recorded in the last decade on higher education in Europe, in particular the promotion of mobility and lifelong learning instruments and programmes, as well as vocational education and training, adult learning, innovation and creativity, and the dissemination and exploitation of results.

Although the process is not an EU initiative, it is actively supported by the EU and is closely connected with EU policies and programmes. It does, however, go far beyond the EU borders and is part of a broader effort to make Europe a significant competitor to the best education systems in the world, and particularly the United States and Asia.

The EU actively supports a large number of measures calculated to improve the content and practices of higher education institutions, not only among the 27 member states but also the neighbouring countries.

It also promotes the modernisation agenda of universities through implementation of the 7th EU Framework Programme for Research and the Competitive and Innovation Programme, as well as making available structural funds and loans from the European Investment Bank.

Not everyone, however, is enamoured with the Bologna declaration and some education experts do not hesitate to describe the Bologna process as a neo-liberal attempt to impose the logic of the marketplace on higher education and promote it as a commodity.

Detractors of Bologna claim the process failed to achieve the agreed goals for improved mobility. The pressure to finish studies in a “regular amount of time” militates against staying abroad and the rigidity of the studies has impeded the desired mobility between universities.

The three-cycle structure has led to greater social selection and constriction of individuality. The bachelor programme is designed to provide a precarious workforce while students, and particularly women, find it difficult to get access to the masters and PhD degree programmes.

Critics also claim that university autonomy is restricted, free education is replaced by ‘efficiency’ and ‘achievement’ principles eventually lead to a lower educated workforce.

Instead of providing solutions for the chronic under-funding of universities, institutions are told to open up to private financing with a consequent loss of independence and direct influence by private firms on teaching and research.

The introduction of, or increase in, tuition fees, managerial concepts and a lack of democracy within the university system are an obvious symptom suggesting supporters of Bologna perceive education as only producing a workforce dictated by the market.

Accordingly, opponents will also gather in Vienna during the Ministerial Conference for a mass counter-conference to protest against what they see as a sell-out of higher education to capital and its subordination to a competitive market.

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Full report on the University World News site

Povl Tiedemann

March 2010