Bologna, mobility and the marketisation of higher education

Jim Coleman, The Open University, UK

Background• Bologna Process launched 2009: academic and political

aims for 29 members• Currently 46 members• Berlin communiqué 2003 added the Lisbon agenda ‘for

the EU to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world’

10th Anniversary Leuven Communiqué

• ‘The Bologna Process is leading to greater compatibility and comparability of the systems of higher education and is making it easier for learners to be mobile and for institutions to attract students and scholars from other continents.’

• Quality assurance• Qualifications frameworks based on learning outcomes

and workload• Objectives still valid but ‘not completely achieved’

Problem?• Signed by 46 European countries, the Bologna process calls on

countries to integrate their education systems and implement a credit transfer system by 2010. Continental universities have had to replace their own degree systems with the bachelor's and master's degrees of the Anglo-Saxon world.

• While supporters say this will increase the competitiveness of European universities and increase mobility for European students, the student strikers argue that the changes have made study programs inflexible and have reduced universities to factories producing workers for the economy.

(Deutsche Welle online 17/06/09)

Problem?• However, depending on how the reforms are implemented, there

can be unintended consequences. National governments seeking to have world-class universities have brought competitive pressure into the process.

• "Rankings and other initiatives to create world-class universities are widespread and act as an intervening factor into the trust and cooperation agenda which underlies the Bologna reforms," Professor Barbara Kehm said.

• "Ultimately," she added, "you can't compete with the outside and think you can keep it out of the inside.“

(Deutsche Welle online 17/06/09)

Problem?• Das humanistische Ideal einer zur kritischen Reflexion

befähigenden, gemeinwohlorientierten Bildung wird zurückgedrängt. Stattdessen wird Bildung den Bedürfnissen des Marktes angepasst und damit selbst mehr und mehr zur Ware. Global sind es die GATS-Vertäge, in Europa der Bologna-Prozess, die den Kern solcher Reformen bilden. (Bildingsstreik leaflet June 2009 )

• Demands included: • Abschaffung von Bachelor/Master in der derzeitigen Form• die Abkehr vom Bachelor als Regelabschluss!• die Einheit von Forschung und Lehre statt der Exzellenzinitiative!

Problem?• Correlation between national educational level and

economic prosperity• Hence national expansion of higher education• Cannot be funded from general public taxation, so

higher private input (privatisations, fees, loans)• International (i.e. non-EU) students an essential source

of income• Hence Englishisation (Campus France, Wächter &

Maiworm 2008) and Bologna as recruitment tools• Each country creating a hierarchy of universities with an

élite to compete globally

Mobility• Aim: ‘In 2020, at least 20% of those graduating in the

European Higher Education Area should have had a study or training period abroad’ (Leuven communiqué §18)

• Aim: ‘Mobility should also lead to a more balanced flow of incoming and outgoing students’ (Leuven communiqué §19)

• Reality: ERASMUS numbers stagnating in established EU member states; Bachelor too tight to allow study abroad (or earning while studying); unbalanced flows

Global ambitions• In the future, the Bologna Process will be co-chaired by

the country holding the EU presidency and a non-EU country. (Leuven communiqué §24)

• The BFUG [Bologna Follow-up Group] is asked … to set up a network … for better information on and promotion of the Bologna Process outside the EHEA . (Leuven communiqué §26)

Global ambitions• ‘The core features of the Bologna Process have sufficient

momentum to become the dominant global higher education model within the next two decades’ (Adelman 2008: v)

• ‘The European Credit Transfer System that developed with the ERASMUS program after 1988, and more recently the Bologna process, has prompted educators throughout Europe to examine their curricula against those of other countries and to develop common outcomes for students. US educators, observing the Bologna process, have begun to consider how the United States might be better integrated with this international movement’.

(Steinberg 2008: 8-9)

Responses?• UK no need to change, dominates Bologna model,

dominates Bologna quality assurance (learning outcomes…), ‘interprets’ ECTS grades…

• Competition for international students, esp. Masters• Mass Education

– From compensation to investment in human capital– C20 cost-free human right, C21 individual investment

‘choice’ – wider political issue– Evolving household budgets

I told you so• Coleman 2003, 2005, 2006: 3-4• Coleman, J. A. (2003). A Bolognai Folyamat és az európai

nyelvtanárképzés jövöje (The Bologna Process and the Future of European Language Teacher Training), Modern Nyelvoktatás (Modern Language Teaching), IX (4): 3-12.

• Coleman, J. A. (2005). New contexts for university languages: the Bologna Process, globalisation and employability, Proceedings of Navigating the new landscape for languages conference (SOAS, London, June 2004), online at

http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/paper.aspx?resourceid=2255• Coleman, J. A. (2006). English-medium teaching in European

higher education, Language Teaching, 39, 1: 1-14.