Select Committee on Education and Skills Written Evidence


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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