“Who would have thought, 10 years ago, that the countries of Europe could start a process of changing their higher education systems? And that they would do it without any laws, without any overt leverage? To have achieved anything would have been significant,” says Tim Birtwistle, an emeritus law professor at the UK’s Leeds Metropolitan University. Not only have the political goals of the so-called Bologna Process been achieved, but a plethora of national reforms and a grass-roots response by the academic community are under way. Noting that most participating countries now use the bachelor’s, master’s, PhD sequence or a similar degree system, and that “learning has become more important than teaching,” Birtwistle, one of the UK’s designated “Bologna experts,” says that “a lot has been achieved, even while much remains to be done.”
At the 10th-anniversary celebration of the Bologna Process, held this past March in Budapest and...
