Dear all,

Last week, the ministers responsible for higher 
education in 46 countries of the Bologna Process 
met in Leuven, Belgium. The meeting aimed 'to 
take stock of achievements of the Bologna Process 
and to establish the priorities for the European 
Higher Eduation Area (EHEA) for the next decade'. 
They issued a list of 29 points in a 6-page 
communiqué*. The communiqué is of course a 
diplomatic compromise, but I'm worried about the 
assumptions that underlie some of the points in 
this statement.


Below are four quotes from the communiqué:

1 - "We ask the higher education institutions to 
pay particular attention to improving the 
teaching quality of their study programmes at all 
levels." (point 14)

2 - "Higher education should be based at all 
levels on state of the art research and 
development thus fostering innovation and 
creativity in society." (point 15)

3 - "Doctoral programmes should provide high 
quality disciplinary research and increasingly be 
complemented by inter-disciplinary and 
inter-sectoral programmes." (point 15)

4 - "[Mobility] encourages linguistic pluralism, 
thus underpinning the multilingual tradition of 
the European Higher Education Area and it 
increases cooperation and competition between 
higher education institutions. ... In 2020, at 
least 20% of those graduating in the European 
Higher Education Area should have had a study or 
training period abroad." (Point 18)



At first sight, these four quotes look fairly 
sensible, but I am skeptical and worried. (I'm 
probably angry too. Would you send your children 
into a higher education system where the quality 
of teaching needs to be improved, where education 
is not based on research and development, where 
the quality of doctoral programmes needs to be 
enhanced and completed, and where mobility and 
linguistic pluralism are not basic requirements 
and need to be enforced?)



It is likely that the effects of this communiqué 
will be observed, if only to report its success 
at the next conferences of ministers in 2012. 
This requires some sort of 'monitoring' or 
'gauging' which can only be based on new sets of 
criteria.

Looking at the four quotes again, I made the following notes:

1 - I'm sure that there is room for improvement, 
but I'm also sure that there are many excellent 
teachers. The sweeping statement that 'The 
teaching quality needs attention' might not be 
applicable to all teachers, in all topics, and in 
all countries. Monitoring this 'teaching quality 
improvement' is likely to require a substantial 
system because it can only be based on individual 
teachers and a range of criteria. Is it possible 
to determine the 'teaching quality' of a group of 
teachers?

2 - This sentence makes two assumptions.
a. Higher education at the moment is not based on 
state of the art research and development.
and
b. There is a direct link between 'higher 
education' and 'innovation and creativity in 
society'.
Both assumptions must be questioned. [For 
example, in graphic design education, 'state of 
the art research and development' might not be 
sufficient yet as a basis for higher education.] 
Furthermore, I am not sure if it makes sense to 
judge higher education according to their 
relations with innovation and creativity. Both 
assumptions might require a new set of criteria 
if they need to be evaluated. Are 'innovation and 
creativity in society' really direct results of a 
rigidly structured higher education?

3 - The third quote makes the assumption that at 
the moment 'doctoral programmes do not always 
provide high quality disciplinary research'. I 
would like to see some evidence for this. The 
need to complement current PhD studies with 
inter-disciplinary and inter-sectoral programmes 
could be seen as a fierce critique on the 
competence of current supervisors, who don't see 
the necessity of this addition at the moment. I'm 
baffled by this arrogance.

4 - The aims ('linguistic pluralism' and 
'increase mobility') are laudable, but the 
combination of these two might be in conflict 
with eachother. This hinges on the length of the 
period that people venture abroad. It is fairly 
hard and certainly time consuming to acquire 
another language, and a 'limited period' would 
certainly not be enough to achieve a suitable 
level. In order to reach the "20 % mobility" it 
is likely that a lot of education needs to be 
provided in some sort of English. This is in 
conflict with the aim of linguistic pluralism.


The communiqué ends with the next steps and uses the following phrases:
- 'To define the indicators used for measuring and monitoring ...'
- 'Stocktaking will further refine its evidence-based methodology'.
- '... through relevant data collection'.

In the next few years, it is therefore likely 
that we will see the development of more criteria 
related to:
- teaching quality
- innovation and creativity,
- doctoral programmes, and
- mobility and linguistic pluralism.

Based on experience related to the monitoring of 
research, I'm not very positive that this 
development will be a success. It would be nice 
if an 'evidence-based methodology' was applied to 
the drafting of communiqué too.

Kind regards,
Karel.
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* http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/conference/