Memorandum submitted by the University
and College Union
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. The Bologna Process is approaching the
last phase of its original projected ten year programme and it
is timely to look ahead. The unions representing academic and
academic staff across Europe were admitted as consultative members
of the process in 2005; in the UK, the University and College
Union argues that the interests and expertise of staff must be
fully engaged in the process at European, national and institutional
levels if it is to be given reality. In particular, more must
be done to raise the profile and awareness of "Bologna"
at the national and the institutional level. There also needs
to be further consideration of how best to protect and develop
the range and diversity of the UK's higher education course provision
in the context of Bologna. Finally, the evolving implications
of the approach reflected in the "Bologna" approach
at the European level for the global higher education and research
community need to be considered. We need to ensure that "Bologna"
does not diminish the strong international character and collegiality
of the UK and European higher education systems.
THE UNIVERSITY
AND COLLEGE
UNION (THE
UCU)
2. UCU represents almost 120,000 academic
and academic-related staff across the United Kingdom. It was formed
by merger of the Association of University Teachers and NATFHE
the university and college lecturers' union on 1 June 2006. The
UCU takes a leading role on higher education issues within the
teachers' global union federation Education International (EI),
and provides one of EI's two consultative representatives on the
Bologna Follow-Up Group.
INTRODUCTION
3. The University and College Union, representing
almost 120,000 academic and academic-related staff across the
United Kingdom, welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to
the Commons Education and Skills Committee Inquiry into the Bologna
Process. The Bologna Process is generally little understood or
discussed in the United Kingdom. In our view, because the UK's
higher education system appears broadly to meet the most high
profile element of the process, the three phase structure of degree
programmes, there has been considerable complacency about the
potential impact of the Process on the higher education system
and graduate employment in the United Kingdom.
4. In fact, Bologna has been a remarkable
and rapid success, and has achieved in a relatively short time,
a remarkable degree of agreement across a European region defined
in far wider terms than even the expanded European Union. Further,
it is now seen in the global context as a challenge to which other
countries and regions need to respond. The London inter-ministerial
conference in May 2007, the fifth in the sequence which started
with Bologna, will start the movement towards the conclusion of
the first phase of the Process. However, it is now clear that
there will need to be a successor phase and in London in May,
the debate on the shape of this next phase of Bologna will begin,
to prepare the ground for the inter-ministerial conference hosted
by the Benelux countries in 2009. Therefore the Select Committee
inquiry is timely and important.
5. The University and College Union is a
member of the global union federation Education International
(EI), and the Pan-European Structure of EI argued forcefully from
the start of the Process that the interests of academic staff
needed to be directly represented within Bologna, on an equal
footing with the university managements and the students, which
had been admitted early on to the consultative structures of Bologna.
Finally, at the Bergen Inter-ministerial conference in May 2005,
EI was admitted as a consultative member of the Bologna Follow-Up
Group (BFUG). One of the two EI members of the BFUG is from the
UCU. It has quickly become clear that the voice of the teaching
and research staff in BFUG is essential in order to establish
a rounded picture of the impact of decisions taken in the Process
on national systems and individual institutions.
THE UK AND
BOLOGNA: INTERMEDIATE
QUALIFICATIONS
6. The UK qualifications system has a number
of idiosyncracies compared with the "Bachelor, Master, Doctor"
model at the core of the Bologna Process. Some of these differences
emerged quite sharply at the Bergen Inter-Ministerial conference.
The question of HNCs, HNDs, foundation degrees and ordinary degrees
has been dealt with so far by a compromise wording contained in
the Bergen Communiqué, which allowed for the possibility
of intermediate qualifications "within national contexts".
This would appear to mean that national systems may include such
qualifications but that they are not part of the Bologna framework,
which is acceptable as long as it does not inhibit their current
pattern of use in the UK.
7. This is not the place to discuss the
future of intermediate qualifications per se. However, the issue
of sub-bachelor courses seems certain to re-open when the Government's
proposals to allow colleges to award their own foundation degrees,
as proposed by the current further education and training bill,
are developed. The capacity and the willingness of the Bologna
Process to accommodate significant deviations from the core three
phase model, or higher education courses which stand outside it,
remain to be tested. UCU believes that these intermediate courses
are an important part of the UK's national higher education provision,
successfully combining our vocational and higher education traditions.
They are particularly important for access and progression, and
valued by students and employers alike. Any developments within
Bologna must not jeopardise their future.
THE QUALIFICATIONS
FRAMEWORK
8. The UK needs to have a clear perspective
on the way in which the national and European qualifications frameworks
articulate with one another but also with the Bologna Process.
The much wider geographical scope of Bologna is a source of tension
between it and the European Union. There have been robust exchanges
in the Follow-Up Group between proponents of the Bologna model
and of the EQF, and the two policy strands can generate new loyalties
and tensions within national systems generally, and the issue
of qualifications frameworks may bring this tension into sharp
focus, but it is to be hoped that means can be found of making
the different systems compatible. The UK will have a particular
interest in this in view of the wide range of its intermediate
qualifications and the emphasis placed on them to deliver the
Government's targets for participation in higher education. Both
for the benefit of the UK higher education system and for our
European interlocutors, the UK needs to make an evidence-backed
case for sub-three year degree qualifications as part of the national
system, on the basis of their impact on access to bachelors' degrees
and to the labour market.
9. There are a number of other issues which
need to be addressed. Ordinary degrees in the Scottish higher
education system do not lead to the second cycle, and in that
sense the Scottish ordinary degree is also a sub-degree valuable
in its own right. Another factor is the high number and wide range
of essentially vocational degree programmes at sub-Bachelor, Bachelor
and Master level. Similarly, "Bologna" also means that
the current debate on degree classification in the United Kingdom
cannot take place in a vacuum. It will need to take trends and
proposed changes across the Bologna area into account. Bologna
is now a system within which national systems operate, not a "bolt-on"
extra.
MASTERS DEGREES
10. The range and diversity of programmes
in the UK leading to Masters' degrees, including not only variations
in duration from less than one year to two or more, but also whether
they are first or second cycle in Bologna terms has also been
identified as an issue of difference between UK provision and
the more homogeneous patterns being set up under the Bologna rubric.
In Scotland the four-year honours degree and Master degrees fits
this pattern more easily. Arguably, the Masters' level is an area
in which Bologna will have a major impact in the UK, encouraging
some positive existing trends. These include moves towards the
Masters level being used as the main route for professional qualification
in some fields, or for continuous professional development as
well as for more general lifelong learning. We believe it would
be unfortunate if the United Kingdom's diversity of provision
at this level, including the range of modes of study which reflect
the lifestyles and needs of the mature student population, were
squeezed out of the system. On the other hand, the requirements
of Bologna could be turned to advantage in making both the objectives
of study and the routes into study, at this level, more transparent,
and also as a guarantor of quality and international recognition.
LIFE-LONG
LEARNING
11. The Bologna Process has made strong
commitments to Life-Long Learning, but this is likely to be a
concept which varies widely in its application from country to
country. In any elaboration of the concept, it is important that
any proposals strengthen and build on the range of life long learning
programmes and modes of study which have been built up in the
UK, and adds new dimensions in terms of mobility and international
recognition.
QUALITY
12. The BFUG appears to be moving towards
a pragmatic approach to Quality Assurance, building on existing
developments and particularly the work of the ENQA, which registers
national agencies, rather than an elaborate reinvention of the
wheel which seemed for a time to be a possibility. However the
success of the Bologna Process in extending its reach so far so
quickly may mean that UK institutions need to work hard within
the emerging quality assurance structures to ensure the credentials
of partner structures and institutions. Academic staff involved
in this work will need to be supported in an increasingly complex
task. Consideration may also need to be given to the needs of
students if they are to fulfil the expectations on them to be
active participants in quality assurance systems, and possibly
training offered to students, as in Scotland. Any system adopted
by Bologna needs to take account of the maturity of national systems
and the potential additional costs and administrative burdens.
UCU would argue that the Bologna Process should not place any
significant extra quality assurance requirements on UK institutions.
MOBILITY
13. The mobility of staff and students,
both for study and employment, is a key feature of Bologna, but
one which the follow-up group has been handicapped by the lack
of data. The UCU is working with EI to host a major seminar/conference
within the Bologna official programme in London in February, entitled
"Making Bologna a reality", on staff and student mobility,
which is aimed at advancing the debate and providing a platform
for the teachers' concerns regarding the Bologna Process. The
deficiency in work and policy on staff mobility so far within
the Bologna Process, can be directly attributed to the lack of
a staff voice.
BOLOGNA AND
THE WORLD
14. The Process is taking increasing interest
in the way the Europe of Bologna relates to other regional and
national developments elsewhere—what it has so far called
the "external dimension". Historically the UK HE system
has been both part of a European structure and tradition and,
equally important, part of the global academic community. The
undercurrents of globalisation and commodification of higher education
and research, themselves part of the rationale for Bologna, are
a challenge to the collegial model of international higher education,
based on international cooperation. We see this collegial model
as a key characteristic of the university. Therefore we welcome
the Bologna emphases on some of the key European commonalities—the
public service ethos of universities, institutional autonomy,
collegiality within and between institutions, academic freedom,
access and quality, even if there is an element within Bologna
of recognising their market value as much as an assertion of them
as intrinsic values of the university. It is essential that the
protection of these characteristics is recognised as important
to the goal of creating a European Higher Education and Research
Area.
CONCLUSION
15. Finally, it is important for the UK
Government to play a leading part in the forthcoming debate on
the future of the Bologna Process after the initial phase is completed
in 2010. There is still a huge job to be done in making the higher
education community itself, and the wider public including in
particular the employers, more familiar with the content and the
goals of the Bologna Process. Further progress needs to be made
to ensure that the current work on issues like quality recognition
of qualifications, staff and student mobility, and labour market
issues is completed and implemented effectively across the countries
of the Bologna Process. There will be a need for a pro-active
management of the system if it is to have an impact on the lives
of staff and students across the Bologna area. In our view this
does not need to be highly bureaucratic, but should draw on the
working methods which have distinguished Bologna from other European
initiatives.
16. In particular this would mean keeping
its core character as an inter-governmental process, while putting
the secretariat on a more established footing so that it isn't
the present "caravan" moving from city to city every
two years. Arguably, the deepening of the process should be accompanied
by a deepening of the expertise and authority of the secretariat.
It must also lead to a more transparent system, making staff and
students aware of the implications of Bologna in a more concrete
way but also raising the awareness of employers—and ensuring
that higher education institutions and policymakers in other global
regions are aware of Bologna. A new phase of Bologna also needs
to build on the start which has been made to bring the consultative
partners (ie, the institutions, staff, students and other non-national
government players) more completely within the process and the
talks on what system should carry the process forward after 2010.
The UCU and Education International would welcome that.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Key action points to be addressed at the United
Kingdom level include:
17. A programme of awareness-raising among
UK institutions and academic staff, about the implications of
Bologna.
18. Support for increased involvement of
academic staff in the professional issues which must be addressed
to make Bologna work, including mobility and career progression
within a European context.
19. A serious national debate about the
implications for the higher education system of the projected
expansion of foundation degrees, in the context of Bologna's commitment
to life-long learning.
20. Pro-active consideration of the second
phase of the Bologna process beyond 2009, and the place of the
UK system within the European and the global higher education
and research community.
December 2006
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