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the quality assessment and the accreditation system. There was a whole discussion:
should we have one European accreditation system, but that is a bridge too far. So what has been decided is that each country would set up a kind of accreditation system but that the agencies in the different countries would agree on recognizing each other’s decisions. I think those are the core elements of the Bologna Process: to standardize certain terminology and make it by that more transparent. I think transparency is the key word.
There are other aspects related to that. It was hoped that not only the Bologna Process would make mobility from one university to another university more possible, so much more student mobility within Europe but also that it would create much more possibilities for mobility of professionals and academics, so the whole mobility of the labor market. And the other aspect is the competitiveness to the rest of the world, Europe sees itself as being in competition with the United States, Japan, Canada etc.
and more and more also China, and if we would be much more transparent then we would be more competitive. These are the main issues that were directed in the Bologna Process, and in that sense you can say it’s a very radical reform of higher education because it made it possible to create innovations that before were very difficult to accomplish especially in the bigger countries like Spain and France and Germany which were very traditional. Change in education is very difficult because of the consequences that it would have for universities, for students, and for faculty, and you would have massive protests if you would do it as a national process but if you are making it a kind of bottom up process it is easier to make those changes.
Something which is not directly in the Bologna Process but also is very crucial in that respect is the whole issue of tuition fees. In Europe most countries have no tuition fees or a very small amount of tuition fees with the exception of the U.K. and at a very large distance the Netherlands. In countries like Germany and the Scandinavian countries even in their constitutions have said that there is no tuition fee possible. In the whole process of modernization of higher education, the large dependence on public funding by the government for higher education became a kind of obstacle for innovation. Because there is not enough input from public funding in higher education, we have to get more diversity of income, and one of the main aspects can be tuition fees.
So there is this whole push to diversify income and by that also to allow higher tuition fees. As a consequence of that you see that first of course the U.K. has increased radically their tuition fees; the Netherlands is gradually each year increasing the tuition fees; and you see that in other countries they’ve started to think about it. Even in Germany: several of the states of Germany have decided to introduce tuition fees.
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There has been an appeal to the Supreme Court in Germany saying that although the constitution says that education at all levels is free, there was a conflict with the fact that the states had the right to determine and they have to finance higher education.
So they said well there is a conflict between what the constitution says and the right of the states in the constitution, and the Supreme Court accepted the fact that the states would be allowed to create tuition fees. So you see now that several states are starting to introduce tuition fees.
So that’s at the national level and automatically the regulation of tuition fees for national students applies to all students in the European Union. It’s a kind of regulation that you cannot discriminate. But then what do you do with the non EU students? The non-EU student fees in the UK already in 1979 during Thatcher had changed. Similar trends you see now in Denmark and the Netherlands, and there are even discussions in Sweden and Finland and in Germany and elsewhere that there will be cost-related tuition fees for the non-EU students. This creates a kind of interesting tension of on the one hand the need for more competitiveness and so attracting more international students to Europe and on the other hand making the cost of studying in Europe higher than before. Nobody really knows what the impact is but the feeling is that there is no direct relation, Students from outside the EU in general would much more look at the quality of the education and are willing to pay for that than that they would do for free education. Although it might be said that if you look at the numbers the German higher education system is receiving much more international students because they are still the cheapest one by not charging fees. At the same time the U.K.
has not been negatively impacted by charging higher fees, so there is no clear picture of that.
(Yonezawa) So you have already almost covered the expansion of Europe and outside of Europe, but I also appreciate all of you I mean Horie san, Huang Futao sensei and Akiba san for interrupting by raising questions. Do you have any questions?
(Futao Huang) Yes. Thank you for the introduction. I have 2 questions.
One is what you just mentioned. The meaning of European dimension. There are so many diversified countries in Europe, as you said countries like Romania and Czech Republic and also countries like U.K. or Germany or Norway, so many differences in Europe. My question is that you’re using the term to establish a sort of European dimension or Europeanization, if my understanding is correct. My question is to what extent the term covers or where it covers. I mean how many countries were included
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or will be included in the idea of building up the European dimensional in process of Europeanization? So politically, or educationally, or economically or casually. That’s my first question.
(de Wit) It is a very complicated question. If you look at it from the political side, you have this distinction between the EU and the rest of the EU and the whole debate about how much the EU should be enlarged with new countries; and the whole debate about Turkey, and what to do with the former states in the Soviet Union particularly Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus etc. There is now a trend politically to say we should not increase more for the coming years, and Turkey might be the last one to join but even that is highly questioned. If you look to the higher education area, from the beginning the concept of the European higher education area has been broader than the European Union.
(Futao Huang) Yes, originally there were about 20 countries.
(de Wit) Now it’s around 40 countries, and there is some discussion that we should increase the number. There is some pressure even from outside of Europe to become part of it. Israel is one of the countries that are asking to become a member of the Bologna Process; then the Northern African countries are claiming that they would be interested to join; there are states in the former Soviet Union that are still not there and would want to join in. So in that sense it becomes a little bit of a global concept.
(Futao Huang) I see. The definition of establishing European dimension does not mean the term of limiting countries in Europe geographically but also means that they will cover more and more countries politically or socially.
(de Wit) Yes. And I think in that sense we have to make a distinction between when we talk about European higher education area which is much more who will be included in the objectives of the Bologna Process, and what we mean with the Europeanization of higher education. Although even that is a very abstract goal-set, I think the Europeanization of higher education, the European dimension is much more EU oriented and that has much more to do with the fact that you want to create more European studies programs, you want to pay more attention to cooperation in mobility of people and all those aspects which are much more related to the European programs like the research framework programs, etc. But even there you can question how
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important that process is. If I look for instance to the Bologna Process, there are the broader goals which I’ve mentioned but the national regulations to a certain extent define the concrete implementation of the Bologna Process. So the way the French are interpreting a Bachelor or Master and a PhD. program is still completely different from that of the U.K. and the Netherlands and Germany.
So in that sense there is still a strong national regulative influence on the Bologna Process and on the reform of higher education. And by that although at the macro level there is more transparency and more clearance, at the micro level and that’s both in the countries and in the institutions, there is much more diversity. My view is that the Bologna Process will lead to more diversity than there was before in higher education.
(Futao Huang) So as you said in the macro level - I would rather use the term at a regional level or at a policy level in those European countries - it looks like that you have a very clear idea of stimulating the process of Europeanization especially the area of higher education. So my second question is what are the most important characteristics of the policy towards the Europeanization or in terms of dealing with the European dimension compared with a very big and much more influential model, I mean the U.S. models. What is the difference between the U.S. models and the European idea? For example it seems that the policy at European level, especially the policy at the higher education level is going towards the U.S. models. For example before the declaration of Bologna Process there were widely and diversified higher education systems from different countries and now you are trying to establish a more transparent education system in European countries. So personally I think I see much more, I mean similarities between the U.S. model and the European model, and the idea especially in the area of higher education.
(de Wit) To a certain extent that’s right, in the sense that we have the same kind of structure now as in the U.S., that’s the Bachelor, the Master, and the PhD. You have our study points system (ECTS) which is not exactly the same as in U.S. but at least makes it much more clear because also the U.S. has a standardized study point system.
You have the quality assurance mechanisms which are different in its instrumentation, but still. So you could say at the broad level there is quite some overlap between the U.S. system and the European system now after the Bologna Process. At the same time there are still some fundamental differences. One of the most fundamental is that in Europe the whole idea of let’s say general education – a liberal arts education –
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in the undergraduate level is not so present as in the United States. There’s still the idea that that kind of general education you get in secondary education, and our secondary education is also one year longer in general than it is in the United States.
So that also implies that our bachelor programs in general are 3 year programs and not 4 year programs. If they are 4 year programs then they are much more like the professional education or community colleges in the United States. So you have this difference especially in the Bachelor education which is quite fundamental. It’s much more U.K. oriented than it is U.S. oriented in that sense. I also think that what you get now and that is already the case in the United States, is that, although you have the Bachelor, Masters and PhD. structure, it is much more focused on the quality of the institution and so you aspire to go to Harvard or Yale, and then if you don’t reach that you go to one level lower and that concept of let’s say the branding reputation of the institution as a kind of leading mechanism for students to choose, that is still something which is not so much present in European higher education. It’s going to change, but given that we don’t have selection in European higher education, students are free to go to every university and that is different in the United States. And the whole next debate in European higher education will be partly on whether there will be selection for going to universities or not. If that is going to happen then there will be much more similar development to the United States. But reputation although it is increasing, is not yet a very strong factor and that’s partly based on the fact that there is no selection.
And the selection already happens at PhD level, but the second step will be the selection of Master programs, which will become a crucial issue. And then later on I think it will also apply to the Bachelor level.
Talking about students and academic mobility I think you have to make a distinction between mobility as part of your degree program and degree related mobility. What the Bologna Process wants to stimulate in particular is the degree mobility so that you go for a next degree somewhere else. That will happen mainly at the Master and PhD.
level. So that students will now after their Bachelor be easier to choose, I’ll do my Masters in another country, and in another university I’ll do my PhD there. We still have to see if that is going to work. That will probably take some generations to really have that change going on because European students tend to be considered very stuck to their institution even to their home city and there is very little of mobility of students outside of their city, if you compare to the United States where there is much more mobility going on. You go for your Bachelor’s from one side of the country to the other side of the country. You go for Masters to another one. The same applies to staff.
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Staff is much more stuck to the university in Europe than in the United States. So it has still to become clear if you can change also the culture and the mentality of people now that we have opened the possibilities and the procedures but it still probably will take some time before really it is going to impact.
The mobility as part of your home degree program such as the Socrates/Erasmus programs etc., they are a little bit under threat because the Bachelor and the Master periods are so short that in comparison if you had a 5 year program then it would be much more easy to fit in a year abroad. So there is some concern about what will happen with that. The way the institutions, also the European Commission and the national governments are trying to make that happen is by creating more joint and double degree programs. So that’s why the joint and double degree development is one of the main drives at the moment in the European programs. There are a lot of legal constraints, especially to join degrees, and that is why a lot of institutions who want to establish joint degrees finally come up with double degree programs. But double degree programs are much easier because then you get 2 degrees – one is regulated by that of one country and the other is regulated by the other country. The only concern with double degree programs is if you use exactly the same time for a degree program and you get 2 degrees for one without having to do anything extra, then you are double rewarded. A double degree program means in my opinion that you have to do a degree program in one institution and you have to do at least something extra to earn your double degree. But they mean a joint degree is just to do everything in the same time, but they cannot call it a joint degree for legal reasons, so they call it a double degree.
And then you get two for one which is in a shop maybe a thing to do but not in a higher education institution. But the point I want to make is: joint and double degree programs are now a very important dimension of the European Corporation.
(Yonezawa) We also had a similar discussion about joint degree and double degree, and in the Japanese case double degree is becoming more popular because of the regulation issue. Technically it is not easy for the Japanese government to allow the joint degree. So joint degree is kind of different story for that. So my question is do you have some examples of countries which are having a progressive approach to the joint degrees in Europe or how is the mechanism to proceed the joint degree under the frame of the EU or the European level and the national level.
(de Wit) As I said there is a lot of playing in that sense because since the regulations are so unclear and complex, everybody interprets the regulations as much as possible.
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It depends on the leaders of the institutions, it depends on the country, how much leeway they gave to saying this is a joint degree or this is a double degree. I think the most commonly known are the degrees that have been established between France and Germany. But it is a very complicated issue because if you don’t have a supra national level, a joint degree then how do you define by national regulation that you can give away your authority. I think that national governments have to be much more working together to make regulations possible before we are getting real joint degree programs.
(Yonezawa) Thank you. Let me also ask again about the Bologna Process. Now we are going to the end of 2007 and could I ask your general impression if you think that Bologna Process is going quite well towards the objective, goal or target 2010?
(de Wit) Reasonably well I think. In most EU countries I would say that the process is reasonably on target and some problematic countries like Greece, and Portugal is a little bit late and also outside of the EU there are still countries which are late in the process, but that’s also because they joined in late. I don’t think that all countries will be completely ready by 2010 but I think given the ambition of what is asked for I think they are doing pretty well in that process.
(Yonezawa) Could you tell something about the current discussions about post 2010, so what will happen after that.
(de Wit) It’s still a little bit difficult to predict. There will be a meeting specially dedicated to that in 2009 if I remember well, to discuss both the implementation of the past 10 years and what will be the next steps. I think they will decide first of all to make it possible for the countries which have not reached the goals to do that in the short period and that will be one of the conclusions. And I think they will indeed look at what other issues are still open, which were not part of the Bologna Process, which came as a result of the Bologna Process. So funding joint degrees, regulations, all those kind of issues and things, that will be much more the next step. So I think there will be a new agenda for probably the next 5 years something like that to really make the process go because I think it would be very unwise if they would say, ‘well, in 2010 we have done our task and now we should stop’, because you have to keep the momentum going and try to accomplish more.
(Futao Huang) By the way can I ask, what do you think are the most decisive and