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Bologna Process The Bologna process has its beginning in 1998 when four education ministers met for

celebration of 800th anniversary of university of Paris and shared the dissatisfaction about the segregated and distributed education systems of Europe. The decision to create a process to address these issues and establish a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) was finalized one year later in Bologna. Around Thirty countries participated in this event and a set of goals were finalized to be achieved until 2010.Since then the number of participants have increased at ministerial gatherings every two years. Currently there are forty seven members countries including some non-European nations. Thus far this process is voluntary and has no legal standing. The main stakeholders of this process are student body,academia, employers and government. The aim behind bologna process is to remove the variety of education systems in the European area, to promote student and scholar mobility, reduce higher education cost, improve qualification acceptance across borders, gain a greater share in international student market and increase higher education trend. In order to achieve these goals,several programs have been initialed which have improved some of the above mentioned factors. On the other hand the process has not completely achieved its desired goals and has been a complete failures in certain aspects. The reasons of failures are ill conceived ground realities, improper assumptions taken by the initiators, political, mistrust among stakeholders and attachment to existing systems. The bologna process has faced criticism because the implementation focused on certain aspects of the problems while neglecting others. The process has improved the student mobility but the qualification acceptance across borders is still a pending issues. This makes students reluctant to study abroad and get new experience as they fear of joblessness when returning home. The process is also criticized for its introduction of three year bachelor programs which tries to reduce the education cost and focuses the education towards more employment centric instead of learning. This becomes a concern when the spending on education has been decreased while an increase in student population has been noted. These changes are politically motivated and are not popular among academia and student body. The involvement of government bodies has also increased the bureaucratic involvement and hence the processes in different programs have become over complicated making it difficult for students to participate. Another issues which has been criticized is that some of the bureaucratic departments have misused this process to interpret the guidelines to suit their long standing agendas and force changes which they were not able to do before. It is also feared by the stakeholders that currently this process is a set of guidelines with no legal obligations but in the future it can be turned into a pan-European law. The process has been in place more then ten years but the aim to improve the global student market share is still not realized. Another criticism is about the fact that the initiators reported the progress to be good but the ground realities were quiet different and the process is no ware near completion even after its planned deadline. The bologna process has been successful in some aspects. It has helped the eastern European nations to realize a new education system after post-communism era. It has been successful in increasing the mobility aspect and improved the higher education and learning trend. The initiators of this process are now realizing the shortcomings and are focusing on addressing the practical issues. For some of the nations the transition to the new system has been quiet successful and is appreciated. The bologna process should not be considered a miracle method and like any system it has its shortcomings but by following the examples of countries with successful education system, e.g USA, the initiators need to realize that by giving autonomy and increasing the funding to the higher education institutions the the situation can be improved. On the other hand removing the diversity of education systems completely can also end badly as diversity is always a source of progress.

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