Inching towards a European Higher Education Area
LEIGH PHILLIPS
01.07.2008 @ 09:45 CET
EUOBSERVER / FOCUS - National education systems of higher education are labyrinthine enough for students when they arrive at college, university or training institute. Taking those credits or qualifications abroad and having other schools or employers understand them – let alone recognise them – has always been a Herculean task, and not just for those studying Ancient Rome.
Once you've got a qualification, how do you know you can take it to another country? (Photo: European Commission)
Is a three-year bachelor's degree in the UK of equal value to a four-year bachelor's degree in North America? A diploma in much of the Anglophone world often refers to a vocational or sub-undergraduate level qualification, but in Austria the similarly named Diplom is post-graduate.
In Germany, qualifications were divided between humanities – where a student after four to six years was awarded a Magister Artium (which, confusingly, was abbreviated 'M.A.', as is the Anglophone Master's post-graduate degree) – and the sciences – where a student after a similar period was awarded a Diplom.
Meanwhile, the French system of post-secondary qualifications has always been seen as extremely complicated as well, and squeezed in between France's one-year maîtrise or master's and a three-year doctorate, was the 1-2 years Diplôme d'Études Approfondies.
Then in Poland, much more straight-forward, there is the licencjat – three years, the inżynier – four years, the magister – five years, and a doktor on top of that.
The fall-out of the non-translatability of the various systems has been extensive and unnecessary retraining when moving to another country, and a loss of credit for courses taken elsewhere.
A recent survey by the Erasmus Student Network revealed that only 58 percent of Erasmus students (the European post-secondary student exchange programme) are receiving recognition for all the courses they take abroad.
As a result of the confusion, just over ten years ago in May 1998 higher education ministers from France, Germany, Italy and the UK signed the Sorbonne declaration on harmonisation of the architecture of European post-secondary system.
The following June, at the 900-year-old University of Bologna, 29 education ministers signed a declaration, committing themselves to the reformation of their post-secondary system structures and the construction of a European Higher Education Area.
As of spring 2007, this process was opened up to all signatories to the European Cultural Convention of the Council of Europe. Entirely voluntarily, some 47 countries have signed up in the past year. Monaco and San Marino are the sole members of the Council of Europe that have not adopted the Bologna Process
"On one of the education commissioner's recent trips," reports John McDonald, spokesperson for commissioner Jan Figel, "even Australia and Thailand expressed interest, and Israel has also formally applied to be a member of the Bologna Process.
Education ministers meet every two years to take stock of how the process is progressing. The next such ministerial meeting will take place in Belgium's Louvain, and for the first time education ministers from African countries are to participate.
All this is all the more remarkable given that the EU has no competence in the realm of education. The Bologna Process was not based on any EU initiative or legislation, but rather through a series of intergovernmental agreements. There are no legal obligations for the signatory states and the whole process of adhesion to Bologna has been entirely voluntary.
If countries still ostensibly jealously guard education within their jurisdictions, how can this be the case? What makes the Bologna Process so attractive?
Bachelor's/Master's/Doctorate
The heart of the process is twofold: the development of a system of credits for both academic learning; and the design of a common degree structure for university education. A similar mechanism is also underway for vocational training – the Copenhagen Process.
For EU member states, there is a third leg to the Bologna stool: a gradual convergence towards a common framework for qualifications.
The European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System, or ECTS, was originally used as a credit transfer system for students in the Erasmus academic exchange programme, where students spend three months to a year of their degree at an institution in another European country. The ECTS enabled credit earned at the foreign university to be recognised by their home institution.
With the Bologna Declaration, the ECTS became one of the central elements in development of a structure for the European Higher Education Area and is now developing beyond its Erasmus roots to cover all programmes – academic and vocational – at institutional, regional, national and European levels.
One credit corresponds to 24-30 working hours, and is linked to "learning outcomes" – education-sector jargon for what a student can now do, not just how long they've been studying. As of 2007, most Bologna signatory countries had implemented the ECTS.
The ministers signatory to the original Bologna Declaration agreed that there was a need to introduce a more uniform, readable system across Europe. Ultimately, a structure was chosen that is partially modelled on the Anglo-American three-cycle Bachelor's-Master's-Doctorate system, with each cycle defined in terms of qualifications and credits earned.
The cycles are defined in terms of qualifications and ECTS credits. The first cycle usually leads to the award of a Bachelor's degree making up 180-240 ECTS credits. The second, leading to a Masters, requires 90-120 credits. And for the final cycle, the doctorate, there is no ECTS range given.
In most cases, it will take a student three years, then two, then another three years to complete the Bachelors-Master's-Doctorate framework, although the actual naming of the three degrees is left up to the country.
Implementation of the three-cycle framework is ongoing, with most signatories expected to have fully implemented it by 2012.
Finally, the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), formally adopted by the European Parliament and the Council on 23 April 2008, was born of a 2006 European Commission recommendation integrating the Bologna Process and the Copenhagen Process for EU member states and making qualifications more understandable whether by other institutions or employers.
Contrary to popular belief, the EQF is not a mechanism for qualification recognition – the EU has no power to enforce such a thing – it simply offers a "translation device" for the various different academic and vocational qualifications acquired across Europe.
Understanding different qualifications
Within the EQF, there are eight levels of qualifications, each of which describes what a student has achieved, rather than the length of time a student has spent at an institution. Students who have achieved Level One within the EQF are said to have a basic general knowledge of a subject. By contrast, Levels Six through Eight are roughly equivalent to a bachelor's degree through a doctorate.
There are two deadlines for EQF implementation: by 2010, the national educational systems of member states must relate to the EQF, and by 2012, all new qualifications must make mention of the EQF level achieved on the document a student is awarded – such as a diploma or degree certificate.
With this, though a potential Polish employer may not be familiar with what qualification is required to be a carpenter in Luxembourg, knowing the EQF levels will enable him or her to much more easily assess what level of education a Luxembourger carpenter applying for a job has.
Although qualification recognition is not enforced through the EQF, it is expected that the system will apply considerable grease to the wheels of recognition.
However, the Bologna Process has not been without its critics. Student groups and a number of professors have criticised how universities and colleges have used the process to attach other reforms such as the introduction of or increase in tuition fees, the transformation of certain departments and overhauls of institution organisation.
Students at the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), argue that the process was used to improve students' performance and speed at which they completed their degrees.
This has turned universities into "diploma factories," they say. Some 85 percent of students fail to attain an official goal of 120 credits over two years, resulting in a rise of 40 percent in the number of students unable to achieve the minimum number of credits to receive student aid since the implementation of the Bologna Process.