Twenty Years of Bologna and a Decade of EHEA: What Is Next?

Abstract

Considering or raising critical questions about the future of the European Higher Education Area is hardly an original endeavor. In one sense, considerations of the future have been present since the outset. In the Bologna Declaration (Bologna Process 1999), 1 the Ministers of the then 29 "Bologna countries" referred to consolidating a European area of higher education by the end of the "first decade of the third millennium" by coordinating their policies to reach specified objectives and indicated their intention to meet two years later to assess progress and "the new steps to be taken". The first new countries acceded to the Bologna Process already two years later, at the first Ministerial conference after the adoption of the Bologna Declaration (Bologna Process 2001), and in 2007 the Ministerial communiqué included a section on "Looking forward to 2010 and beyond" as well as a mandate to the BFUG to "consider further how the EHEA might develop after 2010 and to report back to the next ministerial meeting in 2009" (Bologna Process 2007a, paragraph 4).

The European Higher Education Area: A road to the future or at way’s end?

“…There is therefore a clear case for a Secretariat that works with a time horizon that is not limited to a single work program or Ministerial conference. To establish such a Secretariat, however, a good number of issues would need to be resolved, 72,73 including financial arrangements and guarantees for the Secretariat, the authority under which the Secretariat would work, arrangements for hiring and -in the worst of cases -firing staff, and arrangements for pensions and social security, and the seat and legal arrangements for the Secretariat. Even if these challenges have so far kept the BFUG from exploring a "permanent" Secretariat further, the BFUG will most likely need to explore this option in greater detail as the EHEA enters its third decade.…”

Lessons from over 70 years of regional alignment processes in Europe for international higher education

“…After the creative, innovative and expansive past decades, the 2010–2020 decade saw further extension, tensions and fatigue. Bergan (2015, p. 737) remarked that at the 2012 Bologna Ministerial Conference in Bucharest, more countries were represented at the senior official level than at the political level. One may wonder if, indeed, the interest is waning, not only for the process itself but also for the Bologna Policy Forum, in other words, the connection with the interest of the rest of the world.…”

“…There is a feeling that the EHEA has achieved all it was intended to achieve, because the initial goals are now seen as too ambitious and nobody wants to be associated with failure, because the EHEA is seen too lose focus and become everything to all people, because an increasing focus on implementation implies that the EHEA is now seen as an administrative – some would say bureaucratic – rather than as a political challenge, or simply because “Bologna” ceases to be new it is also perceived to cease to be innovative and politically interesting (Bergan, 2015, p. 737).…”

Beyond Bologna? Infrastructuring quality in European higher education

“…While the precise objectives have evolved over time in connection with the work of the Bologna Follow-Up Group (BFUG) and, in particular, the Ministerial Conferences of members, the main goals of the process have concentrated on mobility between, and the compatibility of, higher education systems and the pursuit of quality in higher education (Bergan, 2019). In practical terms, the drive towards these objectives have included a focus on the structuring of systems in accordance with the three-cycle approach (Bachelor, Master’s, Doctorate); the creation of an EHEA Qualifications Framework and the development of common standards and processes for QA (Bergan and Deca, 2018; Brøgger, 2019). This drive resulted in the announcement of an education space of enhanced mobility and competitiveness, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in 2010.…”