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[bacardiandlime]

Helpful - have you gone through some change recently? You've been on the boards as long as I can remember, but recently you seem different, like asking many (obvious?) questions, that have provoked lmgtfy responses.

[bacardiandlime]

To respond to your question, Helpful, several earlier posters gave explanations of the Masters process in the UK. A Masters degree (in the humanities) may be 'research only' (write a 25,000-30,000 word dissertation), or courses plus a shorter dissertation (10-15,000 words). This course will start Sept-October of one year and end somewhere between June and August of the following year.
ExpatinUk already explained the workload in her field and that not many complete in a year. This will vary between disciplines and institutions.

Some of your questions do suggest you are unfamiliar with academia: what field are you in?

[scotia]

This course will start Sept-October of one year and end somewhere between June and August of the following year.

All the one year Masters I have been associated with are 12 months: start Sept/early Oct, end early Sept. I haven't come across any that end as early as June (or even July). I have also taught on 18 month and one 2 year programs. And as Expat says, students who don't work hard from the start really struggle (at my last institution we didn't allow students to extend beyond the 12 months; a number left having slowed down over the summer and then found they couldn't complete the dissertation).

My new department is currently involved in curriculum reform and I know that Bologna has been mentioned . We seem to have decided to ensure that while the new curriculum is broadly in line we are not aiming for total adherence as the benefits for us are unclear but the potential headaches are all to evident.

[helpful]

To respond to your question, Helpful, several earlier posters gave explanations of the Masters process in the UK. A Masters degree (in the humanities) may be 'research only' (write a 25,000-30,000 word dissertation), or courses plus a shorter dissertation (10-15,000 words). This course will start Sept-October of one year and end somewhere between June and August of the following year.
ExpatinUk already explained the workload in her field and that not many complete in a year. This will vary between disciplines and institutions.

My question was related to expatUK saying the "course plus shorter dissertation" was a teaching Masters, when it sounds like it is teaching plus research (ie. the dissertation).

Most Masters I am familiar with are like that. They usually take two years though (one year of courses and one year of research plus writing). The only ones that are only one year are considered pre-requisites for a Phd program and are courses only (with no 'thesis' or 'dissertation' required).


I am in the social sciences.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Education is best served by having as varied a selection of educational institutions available to students as possible.

Yes, but the thing is, a varied selection was never available to students in Europe. Yes, across Europe there was (and still is) a wide variety. Each European country had its own system. If you lived in that country, you attended that country's system. Moving from one country (thus system) to another, even at the start of university education, was somewhere between difficult and impossible.

I completely understand this aspect of the reform, and I also understand that in the absence of US-style continuous evaluation, it is hard for students to mix-and-match work from diverse institutions.

However, it seems to me that if you are having trouble navigating a complex city, there are two possible approaches to making it easier: you can burn the city down and lay out a new one in the form of a perfect grid (cf Chicago), or you can create a very good road map.  The EU seems to favor the former paradigm rather often in its decisionmaking. - DvF

[quasihumanist]

From a complete outsider...

I would think that in order to standardize university systems, it would be necessary to have some reasonable amount of similarity in high school systems.

I can't imagine the French giving up the idea that every French child should have the same high school education, nor can I see the Germans giving up the idea of sorting students by academic interest and aptitude by the time they are of high school age.

[nordicexpat]

Hi,

I thought I would expand a bit on what Bologna entails, since I was really unclear before.

The initial stages of Bologna were initially concerned with:
 
1) adopting a system of comparable degrees across Europe
2) adopting a system where a three year BA program is clearly distinguished from two-year MA (in the country where i teach, the BA used to be an "optional" degree, and many students would spend years at the university and then drop out without any degree whatsoever)
3) promoting mobility among students and researchers
4) promoting "quality assurance"

The goals have expanded quite a bit since then, but the one that has caught the eye of Clifford Adelman and Kevin Carey (two American thinktankers who have been presented in the US as "experts" on the Bologna Process) is the quality assurance part.  (You can google both to see what they say about the system).  I haven't yet decided what I think about quality assurance (I like Biggs' work, but I have my doubts about how well it could be institutionalized).   But I think it is intellectually dishonest to claim that quality assurance has been instituted in any meaningful way across Europe (I understand it might be in the UK, but even Biggs is skeptical about whether the UK system is what he has in mind). 

My larger point was twofold.  First, Bologna is an ambitious project that would require a ton of additional money being spent on European higher education, money which has not been forthcoming.  Second, a lot of university administrators and government officials in Europe, have, in my opinion, rather cynically promoted Bologna as having instituted a radical change in the status quo, when, in fact, things (at my university at least) are precisely the way they have always been.  American thinktankers take the pronouncements of government and university officials as accomplished facts, and then use the example of Europe as a means of trying to convince Americans to adopt said policies, on the grounds that they are already working in Europe.

IMHO, the only "success" Bologna has achieved has been the promotion of exchange programs. But I would disagree with testingthewaters a bit because I think a huge obstacle still exists between promoting a true exchange of students across Europe: universities are free in some European countries but not in others.  Given EU directives, if one country makes universities free for its own citizens, then it has to be free for everyone in the EU (I find this incredible, by the way, since even in the federalized US, residents pay a different tuition rate for a state university than a non-state resident). This puts an additional drain on resources of universities where tuition is free (we have seen an increase in students wanting to come here: ours is free, unlike their home institutions): meanwhile, our students are finding it difficult to go to Britain for a MA program and have, believe it or not, begun demanding that the university begin to provide funding so they can study abroad. It is hard to see how this difference in resources is going to lead to any kind of harmonization of quality across Europe.     

Reforming universities is hard work, one that is not going to be accomplished by EU directives or the pronouncements of self-serving government officials and American thinktankers.   Hope that I didn't rant too much this time :-)

[donstefano]

The funny thing about the UK is that the country moans all the time about Bologna (many eurosceptics there), while it is probably the most Bologna compatible system in Europe, and has been so for years. Actually, many European countries offer 1-year masters, but within countries there still is considerable variation.
The best thing about Bologna is the ECTS. But the difference in level remains an issue. A Greek MA just isn't taken very seriously.
I do see some attractive opportunities for enterprising students: Do a BA in a country with lower standards, cheap fees, and little work, and do an MA at a more prestigious place - looks good on the CV, and it's not that hard to get into some MA porgrammes, because some universities are just not yet used to getting foreign student, or to evaluating the quality of foreign BA. This is an advantage for enterprising students, but it won't last for years.

Bologna has not changed all that much. Many countries just have renamed programmes: Former 4 or 5 year programmes such licenciados, licences etc have just been renamed and are now 3+1 or 3+2 programmes. And in systems where MA's existed for very specialised programmes (requiring 4-5 years prior study) are now called master-after-master programmes (for this reason you see many european students with 2 or even 3 MAs - looks impressive but doesn't always mean much).

There are some worrying aspects about Bologna though:
1/ funding: all works well if you have small numbers of students moving abroad. They pay the same fees as local students (who are heavily subsidised), and in fact the national government is then subsidising the education of foreign EU students. No problem if you only have several 1000s of students coming to your country, and if you send equal numbers abroad. My own country is now attracting loads of foreign students, who pay the low 1500/year fees. This costs the government fortunes, but the government pays it because of the prestige of being an international centre of education. I'm not sure what the new funding systems will bring. I consider full-fee systems very undesirable. Higher education is a public good.

2/ language: an increasing number of MA programmes are being taught in English. For some disciplines this is very dangerous, because it shifts the discipline in a certain direction. The debates, journals, and methods used in English language countries are different from those in German or French language outlets. There is a real risk of the discipline becoming too homogeneous. There are many intriguing national debates in my discipline, but we feel the pressure to start focusing more and more on developments in the UK and the US, because studies of our national systems have difficulties getting published.

[secretweapon]

I'm surprised that there is so much anti-Bologna feeling here.  It's not perfect but I certainly think it's a step in the right direction.  There are problems with its implementation, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

To respond to your question, Helpful, several earlier posters gave explanations of the Masters process in the UK. A Masters degree (in the humanities) may be 'research only' (write a 25,000-30,000 word dissertation), or courses plus a shorter dissertation (10-15,000 words). This course will start Sept-October of one year and end somewhere between June and August of the following year.
ExpatinUk already explained the workload in her field and that not many complete in a year. This will vary between disciplines and institutions.

My question was related to expatUK saying the "course plus shorter dissertation" was a teaching Masters, when it sounds like it is teaching plus research (ie. the dissertation).

Most Masters I am familiar with are like that. They usually take two years though (one year of courses and one year of research plus writing). The only ones that are only one year are considered pre-requisites for a Phd program and are courses only (with no 'thesis' or 'dissertation' required).

I am in the social sciences.

"Taught masters" is shorthand for a masters that has both mandatory taught courses and a dissertation - it is distinguished by the inclusion of teaching, not the exclusion of research.

Education is best served by having as varied a selection of educational institutions available to students as possible.

Yes, but the thing is, a varied selection was never available to students in Europe. Yes, across Europe there was (and still is) a wide variety. Each European country had its own system. If you lived in that country, you attended that country's system. Moving from one country (thus system) to another, even at the start of university education, was somewhere between difficult and impossible.

I completely understand this aspect of the reform, and I also understand that in the absence of US-style continuous evaluation, it is hard for students to mix-and-match work from diverse institutions.

However, it seems to me that if you are having trouble navigating a complex city, there are two possible approaches to making it easier: you can burn the city down and lay out a new one in the form of a perfect grid (cf Chicago), or you can create a very good road map.  The EU seems to favor the former paradigm rather often in its decisionmaking. - DvF

I think your analogy is a bit extreme.  It's a bit more like if you are building a wooden structure - let's say a stepladder - and you have 25 people providing the rungs.  You want to build this ladder so that you can reach higher, and it needs to be stable, otherwise someone could hurt themselves.  Unfortunately, the rungs that people provided are all different shapes and sizes.  If you want to fit these squares pegs into round holes, you have to convince each person to trim the edge a bit, shorten here, add a bit of filler there.  You try to explain them that this ladder will be used by everyone and that there needs to be some compromise.

I agree with Quasihumanist that one of the difficulties is the culture of specialization at the high school level.  Another major, related issue is language teaching - part of the problem on the UK end is that relatively few students have the language skills to avail of programmes in other EU countries.

Donstefano, I agree with most of your post, except I see a little problem with your "enterprising student" example.  By doing BA in a country with lower standards your student might not have the skills to go on to the MA.  This is the real issue with Bologna reforms: everyone talks about the length of study, but we all know that is not a firm indicator of the skills that are taught and the types of assessment - longer is not better, although the states with long study would like to believe that.  Unfortunately, discussions about the quality of education in varying countries just leads to accusations of chauvinism, but it's no secret that students are better prepared to analyse, write and avoid plagiarism in some countries than others.  (Here, in turn, I reveal my own cultural and educational bias, since those skills are not equally valued in all European national educational systems). 

[expatinuk]

I've been very involved with the Bologna process for a number of years now. I run a collaborative master's where students from six countries/institutions work together on a joint degree. There have been ups and downs with the program (one of the biggest problems was the fact that the UK doesn't really participate in a 3+2 program).

I love the ECTS and I really like outcomes assessment (works really well if you KNOW how to write assessment criteria). The biggest drawback to the assessment (in my not so humble opinion) is the grading scale. There's no difference in what is considered passing at the undergraduate level and what is considered passing at the post graduate level. Not all institutions apply the scale in the same way.

But... it's all a start.

[expat_scand]

I think overall the Bologna process has had a positive effect on a local level, and has advantages on the larger level. No, university education in different countries will never be exactly comparable – they are not always comparable even at national levels. The UK has their rating system, Germany has their elite universities, etc. Because there isn’t a fully comparable playing field at national levels, it is unlikely that Bologna will ever create a level playing field at the European level. However, it makes degrees more comparable (note that I am not writing ‘equal’, but comparable), and because of the shift – albeit gradually and not yet uniformly – to the use of ‘learning outcomes’ it will make coursework more understandable from one place to another. And no, contrary to an earlier comment, the UK is not the only place where it is possible to properly formulate learning outcomes in terms of proper taxonomy à la Bloom (the task, however, is to develop proper examinations that actually reflect the stated learning outcomes). Bologna is not and will not be perfect, but are all university and college degrees in the US perfectly comparable? It is reasonable to expect this for the Bologna process?

The positive benefit at the local level has been the effect of forcing people to rethink and then revamp courses and programs. It has led to the asking of rather pointed questions as to why a particular course is taught and what really are its aims. From my perspective this process has been very good for our science programs: unnecessary overlap has been reduced and mostly removed, pointless outcomes such as ‘students will learn about’ have been removed, learning outcomes are properly framed according to learning taxonomy where outcomes from basic-level courses are clearly framed at a lower level than for advanced-level courses. This would not have happened so rapidly without the push of Bologna. I recognize from colleagues in other countries, however, that the speed of this process and the level implementation is quite variable – I have heard some bizarre first-hand stories (for example, a colleague in my department once listened at an ECTS meeting to a professor from Italy go on about how his lectures were worth twice as many ECTS as those of others).

That the same degrees are issued at a European scale does not mean that all universities and all countries will suddenly teach the same way. In two advanced-level courses I lead, we typically have a mixture of local and foreign (other European countries) students, which from my perspective makes for better courses and better student interaction. Our students (on average) have more practical skills, they can be given a field task, given a set of car keys and off they go – unsupervised. They can handle the responsibility and act relatively independently, and the work will be done. The same applies to the laboratory tasks. For the other European students that I have encountered, they have (on average) broader and more solid theoretical knowledge, but have far less practical experience and independence (this includes UK students). This balance varies of course even among the other European students, and reflects different emphases in the academic traditions in each country (and for field-oriented sciences also reflects geographic realities). This variation is good, and I do not think Bologna will change this.

[frenchdoctor]

The first destination of French students is Spain (*). A friend of mine, who teaches hispanic studies, says that the enrollment in his field is still low and that it remains rather confidential. So, why students who don't care at all about Spanish language and culture choose to go to Spain on exchange programs ?

Answer, given by said friend : http://www.playayfiesta.com/pyf.php

But this is anecdotal. A more important issue is the idea that all degrees at all european universities could somehow have the same value. Has a BA at Cambridge, or Heidelberg, the same value than a BA at any other European university (**) ? I doubt it. The best universities will remain selective and protect their enrollment. Bologna process or not Bologna process, I can garantee you that you won't enter the ENS with a BA from a third tier Slovanian, Hungarian or Maltese university. It has nothing to do with xenophobia, mind you : you won't enter it with French BAs either. To enter it, you need a very specific exam. And the ENS restricts its exchange programs to Ivies/Russell group universities.

In other words, the ENS doesn't care at all about the Bologna process, and I bet the best European institutions will do the same. So, the process itself ? Gradually, it will only apply to non or least-selective universities and will turn into some sort of minor league system. The best unis already have their own exchange protocols, anyway.

--------------------
(*) http://www.europe-education-formation.fr/docs/Erasmus/Rapport-Erasmus-2000-2007.pdf

(**) you can transpose the situation in the US. Would you say that a BA at some compass point university in Alabama has exactly the same value than a BA at Amherst, Brown or Dartmouth ? Imagine a federal law claiming that, in order to ease exchanges, all degrees at all American universities have now the same value. Will Harvard, Stanford and Yale grad schools be eager to accept students from South-East-Western-Alabama University just because a federal law says so ? Frankly ?   

[helpful]

Here is a good article critiquing the process:

http://www.cautbulletin.ca/en_article.asp?articleid=2828

[donstefano]

The best universities will remain selective and protect their enrollment

Not always. In many European countries there are almost no entrance requirements to start a BA other than having a high school degree. In the Belgian system, universities aren't allowed to select their students (minor exceptions apply to medicine and engineering). The same goes for the Netherlands, again with some minor exceptions.

Some top universities do indeed select, but not in all courses, and many top universities do not select at all.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

This has traditionally been true of some US public universities, even some of the top-ranked ones: admissions would be relatively open, but the actiual degree would be serious.  There is a lot of sense to this.  However, the big mantra in accreditation now is graduation rates, and universities are somehow considered deficient if the students they admit don't graduate in 6 years.  This doesn't play well with easy admissions, and is causing serious hand-wringing at many universities.  You Bolognaites should keep an eye peeled for this. - DvF