The future of the Bologna Process

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The future of the Bologna Process

• Bologna beyond 2010
• The Prague Students Declaration
• Ligia Deca
• ESU Chairperson
• National Training Seminar for Bologna Experts
• 17-18 March 2009, Malta

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A long story short

• 1982 WESIB was founded by seven unions
• 1989 The Wall fell and WESIB changed to ESIB
• 1999 The Bologna Process starts and ESIB creates
  content committees
• ESIB turns into ESIB The National Unions of
  Students in Europe
• 2007 ESIB is renamed into ESU
• 2008 EUA and ENQA ask ESU for
• students in external evaluations

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Over 11 millions of students in Europe!
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Putting forward an agenda
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Bologna chez nous hijacking the agenda

• Bologna Process à la carte by Governments and
  universities
• Confusion during implementation
• Protests for mixing up reform agendas
• Lack of public debate about Bologna at home
• Misunderstanding of the concepts and decisions
• Tuition fees and removing students from HEI
  Boards
• Students starting to protest (Greece, Croatia,
  Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Ireland
  etc.)

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Merging Bologna and Lisbon?
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Do you see any similarity to a Process we know?
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Current debates in the BFUG

• Rankings for assessing quality
• Importance of private funding
• Concrete goals for social dimension and mobility
• Improving data collection and use
• Competition with other regions of the world
• Student centred learning
• Lifelong learning, employability and the crisis
• Education and research
• An agenda for 2020!

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ESUs contribution to the new agenda

• Towards 2020 a student centred Bologna
  Process Policy Paper (Nov. 2008)
• Prague Student Declaration (Feb. 2009)
• Main messages
• Prioritise public funding not tuition fees
• European target for access and completion
• National goals for minorities in higher education
• 20 of the European students should be mobile
• Internationalisation for exchange not for profit
• Lifelong learning with quality as a right for all
• Student participation in all levels (also
  agencies)
• Better information from QA not rankings

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Our vision on the renewed BP

• The creation of the EHEA, with the following
  features
• High quality of its higher education provision
• Its focus on catering for diverse student and
  societal needs and
• Its capacity to ensure equal opportunities for
  all, free from discrimination and barriers to the
  development of the full potential of its
  citizens.
• The core values needed to guide the achievement
  of such goals are student participation and
  academic freedom within a framework which
  enshrines education as both a public good and a
  public responsibility

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Demand for ministerial commitments to 2020 (1)

• Focus on the completion of the already existing
  action lines in a comprehensive and measurable
  manner -gt clear benchmarks in all policy areas
• Increase the knowledge and accountability of the
  Bologna Process to the wider public
• Student participation at all levels
  (institutional, national and European)
• Commitment for the full implementation of the BP
  over the next decade - gt increased public
  financing
• Free access for all to a quality HE
• Diversifying student population and increasing
  participation and completion rates for the
  typical age cohort

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Demand for ministerial commitments to 2020 (2)

• Strive for commiting to and progressing towards a
  20 mobile students by 2020 overall European
  benchmark (outward cross-border mobility,
  balanced across the EHEA)
• Multi-level coordination of mobility financing
• Easing visa and work permits regulations
• Creation of European guidelines for RPL as an
  essential part of both LLL and mobility
• Governmental responsibility for the quality of
  TNE
• Increased policy dialogue with other regions,
  with a strong student and stakeholder involvement
  component, but not exporting or marketising
  Bologna

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Demand for ministerial commitments to 2020 (3)

• Enhancement of high quality, flexible, and more
  individually tailored education paths QF, ECTS
  and LO
• LLL integral part of the education system,
  subject to the same principles (not a pocket
  Swiss knife concept)
• The search for quality, equity and access in LLL,
  as a widening participation tool
• Transparency through sound QA and stakeholder
  involvement, while not encouraging shallow league
  tables that only focus on a reduced number of
  assesment criteria
• How reliable is a ranking positioning?

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Study case THES (Times HE Supplement Ranking)

• The University of Osaka, Japan went from position
  69 in 2004 to 105 in 2005 and back to 70 in 2006.
  
• Ecole Polytechnique, France, moved from position
  27 in 2004 to 10 in 2005 and to 37 in 2006.
• The University of Geneva went from not being
  ranked in 2004, to position 88 in 2005 to
  position 39 in 2006
• Interesting effects
• University of Malaya dropped 80 places in the
  THES rankings without any decline in its real
  performance due to definitional changes. This
  resulted in a replacement of the Vice-Chancellor
  and embarrassed the university, which claimed in
  an advertisement two months shy of the 2005 THES
  results, that it strived to be among the 50 best
  universities by 2020.

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Conclusions

• The future is yet to come, but its direction is
  to be decided quite soon
• When in doubt, ask the students!
• (Germain Dondelinger CoE conference in Moscow
  2006)

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• Thank you for your attention!
• Ligia Deca
• ligia_at_esu-online.org
• www.esu-online.org