Memorandum submitted by the University
of Leeds
A. EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
A.1 The University of Leeds has for some
five years been, through a small specialist senior group, monitoring
and attempting to influence the Bologna Process.
A.2 Drawing from this experience, the University
presents its comments and evidence on the Bologna Process under
the main headings of the Consultation's Terms of Reference.
A.3 The University is generally very supportive
of the advantages the process offers to its graduates, the UK
in general and itself. However it draws attention to the elements
on which it considers action is desirable to ensure that the UK,
its citizens and UK HEI are not disadvantaged. The principal of
these elements are:
— the position of the one-year Masters
degree;
— the desirability of avoiding the
implementation of the ECTS system unless it is substantially redeveloped
to be based on learning outcomes rather than crude and unverifiable
input measures; and
— the need to review funding arrangements
particularly in relation to the Masters degrees (in all the forms
to which they have currently evolved).
B. BRIEF INTRODUCTION
TO THE
UNIVERSITY OF
LEEDS
B.1 As a leading research-intensive university,
the University of Leeds is equally committed to ensuring that
its learning and teaching provision provides its students with
the best possible educational and developmental experience. It
has a long "international" track record and a strategy
designed to ensure that it increases its international recognition.
As part of this strategy it has, for some five years, been monitoring
Bologna Developments—for the last four years through a specially
constituted group drawn from senior members across its faculties
appointed through its Learning and Teaching and Graduate Boards.
This Group is also charged with ensuring the University's views
are appropriately represented in the Bologna Process and that
it is in a position to consider and act appropriately on the implications
of developments. Members of that Group have represented the University
and national bodies such as the EWNI Credit Forum at a number
of Bologna Seminars and other associated events across the spectrum
of Doctoral Degrees, quality enhancement and recognition/credit/qualifications
frameworks developments.
B.2 This response to the consultation has
been prepared by that Group and is intended to convey our comments
and concerns. We have presented these under the main headings
of your consultation's terms of reference.
C. COMMENTS,
INFORMATION AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Implications of the Bologna Process for
the UK Higher Education sector: advantages and disadvantages
1.1 The creation by 2010 of the European
Higher Education Area (the "Bologna Process") has been
described as "embracing a diversity of national education
systems which [are] learn[ing] to interacti". Viewed on this
basis and taking account of the principal tools (the Qualifications
and Quality Assurance Frameworks) that were agreed at Bergen in
2005, it can be argued that the Bologna model is close to the
models already operating in the UK. The UK has not had to undertake
major structural revision of its HE qualifications and its qualifications
assurance structures as has been the case in some European countries.
English has emerged as the language of the Bologna Process and
representatives from England and Eire have taken leading roles
in many of the developments. Indeed, an unanticipated consequence
of the Bologna Process has been to cast the UK Higher Education
system in a very favourable light. We are seen by many continental
colleagues as having travelled along paths, particularly in the
quality assurance area, that they are only now beginning to negotiate.
1.2 There are obvious advantages from the
process to the missions of UK HEI in opening up opportunities
for co-operation and the development of common approaches. The
Ministerial meetings are to be congratulated for having been effective
in ensuring that the process remains developmental without the
imposition of the highly bureaucratic and resource- and time-consuming
approaches favoured by some (such as some of the proponents of
the Tuningii approach as funded by the EC).
1.3 The two Frameworks referred to in 1.1
above, possibly together with ECTS, may well be the only tools
that are agreed amongst the currently 45 Member States as being
required to promote the desired interaction. If this is indeed
the case the principal economic disadvantage that is likely to
accrue to UK education from the Bologna Process alone is greater
competition in the market for international students. However,
the UK will remain attractive to those students who only have
English as a second language, which may offset the effects to
some extent.
1.4 Increased competitiveness is however
relatively simple to spot. There are already rumours of a growth
in the number of doctoral candidates across Europe but this growth
is understood to be coming from international rather than European
students. There are other more elusive disadvantages perhaps not
stemming directly from the Bologna Process but from the way in
which individual European countries may seek to interpret the
main tools of the process to their own competitive advantage and
to the UK's disadvantage. In this they may be being assisted by
the utilisation of the Bologna Process by the European Commission
in pursuit of the European Union's Lisbon Strategy and its desire
to achieve a "Europeanisation" of Education with the
stated aim of increasing the mobility of citizens for employment
and educational purposes. Funding is being selectively applied
to programmes such as the "European Joint Masters degree"
which must include study in at least two European countries and
great emphasis is placed on two-year Joint Masters developments.
The recent Bologna Seminar on Joint Degreesiii in Berlin in September
continues to promote the ideal of the European Masters degree
seemingly regardless of the obvious reluctance of many Member
States to enable their introduction through changes in legal arrangements
and the huge complexity and expense of establishing the necessarily
highly complex quality assurance arrangements.
1.5 In the future it is conceivable that
our most able citizens may well need a Masters level qualification
to achieve mobility of employment and access to doctoral/research
training in Europe. Tensions arise between the three principal
functions of the Masters degree namely as a demonstration of the
achievement of the higher professionally and academically orientated
skills, as a focus for interdisciplinary studies and developments
and as the preparative route to the doctoral level degrees.
1.6 In the UK taught and research programmes
fall under different ministerial arrangements with an appearance
of insufficient attention being paid, particularly in funding
mechanisms, to the importance of the Masters level degree. It
can also be argued that the EC's funding models, preferentially
in support of the Lisbon Strategy, are insufficiently supportive
of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences—disciplines
which are crucial to cultural and social well-being across Europe
and which are also crucial in an economic sense.
1.7 It is too early to draw any conclusions
about the effect of the UK's change in the funding regime for
UG students particularly in respect to their future willingness,
and indeed financial ability, to continue their studies to the
Second (Masters) and Third (Doctoral) cycles. Our continuing competitiveness
is likely to depend heavily on the extent to which our main potential
European competitors go down the same funding route albeit that
there are, of course, different arguments about competitiveness
for EU students and non-EU students.
2. The Agenda for discussions at the 2007
meeting in London—clarifying the UK position
2.1 The Bergen Communiqué set out
the main agenda for the London meeting. The UK's position vis-a"-vis
that agenda has been admirably set out in the recent UK Europe
Unit's Guide.
2.2 Of significant concern to us is the
need for clarity about the agenda that needs to result from the
London meeting. Have we reached, in the two overarching frameworks
on qualification and quality assurance agreed at Bergen, as far
as the Bologna Process can go in agreeing common tools? We would
argue that this is now likely to be the case and that it should
now be down to individual countries to implement the process in
accordance with these arrangements. Unless there is a fundamental
rethink of ECTS, we would wish to downplay its role (as a principal
or supportive tool in "regulating" the Bologna Process)
in favour of learning outcomes as indeed has been stressed in
the recently published Burgess Group's Proposals For National
Arrangements for the Use of Academic Credit in Higher Education
in England. iv HE and the Bologna Process must continue to
concentrate on learning outcomes and competencies and not get
side-tracked into the highly contentious minutiae of credit systems
such as ECTS (see below).
2.3 We cannot stress too strongly our view
that the future agenda needs to take more firmly into account
the EC's development of the European Qualifications Framework
for Life Long Learning (EQF) v and the European Credit Transfer
System For Vocational Education And Training (ECVET): vi the former
has the intention of covering both HE and VET (FE) whilst the
latter is being developed as an essential tool of the EQF but
purportedly only applicable to VET (FE).
3. The implications of a three-phase structure
of higher education awards for one-year Masters and short undergraduate
courses (HNCs, HNDs, and Foundation Degrees)
3.1 The UK Masters degree is in great danger
of being "lost in the middle" of the three phases. It
is likely, in its one year discipline/profession specific form,
to be the key to greater mobility throughout Europe despite the
EC's promotion of two-year forms. EU/EC and some countries have
an agenda that each phase of education should cover generic skills
including languages, citizenship and a European dimension. There
is a limit to how much can be done by way of developing generic
skills if the focus of the academic or professional discipline
is not to suffer. It is difficult to do this within the constraints
of a UK three-year Bachelors degree in many disciplines and almost
impossible within a one-year UK taught masters. UK HEIs have achieved
international recognition of their ability to develop high-level
discipline/academically specific skills within the confines of
the calendar year Masters degree and their ability to continue
to offer and develop the degree in this form must be defended
and enhanced.
3.2 Although perhaps not apparent from the
"official" governmental responses which have fed into
the reports prepared under EC-funded projects for previous Ministerial
meetings, vii the evidence continues to mount that one year Masters
degrees are becoming more common in continental Europe and are
apparently also gaining ground in Ireland. There is also a move
to "fast-tracking" in Germany, so that good candidates
do not need to complete their Masters qualification before embarking
on a Doctorate.
3.3 The University, following the advice
of the UUK Europe unit, will make its four-year integrated Masters
degrees (MEng, MChem, MGeol, MMath etc) compatible with Bologna
by requiring at least 120 out of the total of 480 credits to be
at Masters level, and awarding both a Bachelors and Masters degree
at completion of the programme of study. (cf also the Council
for Mathematical Sciences report: www.cms.ac.uk/CMS_Bologna_Report_nov06.pdf
where the issues are discussed in more detail.)
3.4 We do not perceive any significant issues
with the concept of Foundation Degrees as "short cycle"
awards within the First Bologna cycle. However there is a problem
of acceptance of the "degree" nomenclature—both
within the UK itself and in Continental Europe. It remains to
be seen whether this issue will decline with the passage of time.
4. Awareness and engagement in the Bologna
Process within HEIs
4.1 We acknowledge that awareness of and
engagement in the Bologna Process within UK HEIs is patchy at
best—but this is perhaps not surprising given that many
of the key decisions in earlier years (eg the UK's commitment
to the Bologna Process and indeed the Lisbon Strategy) were political
decisions, taken without consultation with HEIs and apparently
in the belief that the Bologna Process would have minimal impact
on UK HEI arrangements. A number of individuals from the UK HE
sector have engaged very actively with the details of the process.
They have been very influential in keeping the process moving
ahead in UK terms in particular in avoiding the return through
Bologna of some of stages we have already gone through in developing
our understanding of the advantages of Quality Enhancement approaches
and in highlighting the need for sophisticated approaches to credit.
We acknowledge without reservation the principal role that the
UK's QAA has played in the former respect.
4.2 There is a limit to the extent that
UK HEIs can themselves engage in and influence the process without
engagement, consultation and promotion from those better placed
to influence its outcomes—particularly when the process
is not itself directly funded. There are indeed other changes
that could be made nationally which would assist UK HEIs in adapting
not only to Bologna but to the changing expectations and demands
made of and upon them by students, employers and society in general.
In this respect your parallel wider consultation is to be welcomed
in the hope that it may result in changes including more (better
targeted?) financial support.
4.3 HEIs in other countries have engaged
more with the process: some enthusiastically seizing the chance
to embark on radical reforms, while others have done the minimum
necessary to comply with new legal requirements stemming from
the process. There is a need for a long process of development
of mutual understandings of the educational and pedagogic approaches
underpinning the Bologna instruments. We commend the work being
undertaken by the European Universities Association (EUA) in progressing
such understandings—particularly in relation to the development
of a more consistent approach to the Doctoral degrees. However
the resistance evident in some quarters to the necessary fundamental
redevelopment of ECTS to take into account learning outcomes rather
than crude input measures is perhaps the greatest evidence of
the length of the journey that needs to be travelled by some of
those who wish to influence developments in Europe.
5. Opportunities to enhance the mobility
of students from the UK
5.1 The Bologna Process does not seem to
us in itself greatly to enhance the prospect of increased mobility
for UK HEI students. UK HEI would be better placed to encourage
access by their students to any funding for such mobility available
from the EC if the underpinning UK educational structures (at
primary and secondary level) themselves reflected the sort of
Europeanisation being sought by the EU/EC ie we would recommend
that the UK Government needs to seek to increase the commitment
to foreign language tuition in the secondary school curriculum
in order to give our citizens greater confidence in their abilities
to survive where English is not the first language.
6. The possible implementation of a European
Credit Transfer System (ECTS) and a focus on learning outcomes
and competencies
6.1 As should be evident from the foregoing,
we strongly believe the UK should resist any attempts to impose
ECTS as a credit and transfer enabling tool. We fully support
the arguments articulated by the UK Europe Unit in the recently
published Burgess report on credit. iv ECTS's development as a
useful aid to the mobility of Socrates/Erasmus students only provides
the most basic measure of comparability with no account being
taken of the length of the "educational year" concerned
or the level at which any learning was achieved. Learning outcomes
and competencies are likely to prove a more fruitful development
provided a commonality of understanding can be reached about the
concept of "level".
7. Quality Assurance systems in HE (teaching
and research): the compatibility of UK proposals and Bologna
7.1 The UK's QAA together with its colleagues
from Eire has already been highly influential in ensuring that
the Bologna Quality Assurance Framework is compatible with UK
arrangements. It should be encouraged to continue its work through
ensuring that the Bologna arrangements embrace the important concept
of Quality Enhancement as a means of avoiding the bureaucratic,
tick-box approach to quality assurance which is emerging in some
quarters.
8. Degree Classification Reform in the light
of Bologna
8.1 Many European countries appear to grade
summatively their final awards by some means or other and we have
found nothing in the Bologna Process which is inimical to current
UK arrangements. It could indeed be argued that the current introspective
self-critical review of the UK's long-established and internationally
accepted classification arrangements have betrayed uncertainty
at a time when no adequate alternatives are available for effective
comparison.
9. The broader impact of Bologna across Europe:
a more standardised Europe and the consequences for the UK's position
in the global marker for HE (Bologna and the second phase of the
Prime Minister's Initiative for International Education (PMI 2))
9.1 The Bologna Process has led to a profound
restructuring of Higher Education in many parts of Europe. The
impact has been most keenly felt in Germany, where there has also
been the greatest resistance to change from the Humboldtian model
of university education.
9.2 Most countries have now instituted a
first cycle leading to a Bachelor degree or equivalent in three
or four years. (Possibly the only significant exception is the
Grandes Ecoles system in France, which continues much as before.)
It remains to be seen how many students will complete their studies
in the intended time frame.
9.3 So far, in countries where a five year
degree was the norm, the labour market has not responded by employing
first-cycle graduates as graduates, and able students expect to
go on to a Masters degree. There has been a growth in one year
Masters courses, but also a tendency in the Nordic countries for
the second year of a Masters to become, in effect, the first year
of Doctoral training. This poses a challenge for mobility of students,
who, however well qualified, may still have to do the second year
of a Masters degree to be accepted on a Doctoral programme at
an institution (in those countries) other than their own.
9.4 Though, by and large, no extra money
has been forthcoming from governments for the first (undergraduate)
cycle, many European countries have been putting money into doctoral
training as a spur to reorganising that too. In some cases, this
has involved supporting Masters courses as a prelude to Doctoral
training.
9.5 Some of the common instruments inspired
by Bologna Process and the EC—such as Europass with its
inclusion of the Diploma Supplement are likely to prove beneficial
in the longer term for the mobility of graduates of UK HEI. Any
such benefit perhaps needs to be balanced by recognition that
such "bureaucratic" instruments need to be developed
in conjunction with HEIs in general (as opposed to a relatively
few professionals some possibly not engaged actively with the
way in which HEIs are changing in response to the development
of electronic means of communication). We have ourselves devoted
considerable effort to developing an approach to the Diploma Supplement,
with future digitisation in mind, which combines the Diploma Supplement
requirements with the more internationally established transcript
and statement approaches for, respectively, taught course and
research degree graduates. Through this we hope to provide our
graduates with documentation which is of real value to them in
the global employment market they are entering.
December 2006
i Kirsten Clemet, Norwegian Minister
of Education and Research, October 2004.
ii
http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/educ/tuning/tuning_en.html
iii
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/bologna/uploads/documents/Kurzversion_BFUG.pdf
iv
http://bookshop.universitiesuk.ac.uk/downloads/Burgess_credit_report.pdf
v
http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/educ/eqf/index_en.html
vi
http://ec.europa.eu/education/ecvt/index_en.html
vii
http://www.bologona-bergen2005.no/Bergen/050509_Stocktaking.pdf
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