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About the Author
Bob Zemsky describes himself as being old and round enough to be mistaken for a pooh-bah. He was a member of the Spellings Commission and, as an author and researcher, has focused on making colleges and universities mission-centered and market-smart. He has focused on what globalism might really mean for higher education, on what technology has not accomplished, and how to make learning important to the higher education market. Bob currently serves as professor and chair of The Learning Alliance at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Bob ZemskyRecent Posts
Lessons From the Cost-Quality Curve | Comment [2]
Quality -- Reform's Fourth Horseman | Comment [4]
Access to Success | Comment [2]
Is Access Still the Question? | Comment [3]
Affordability: Devil in the Details | Comment [2]
Featured Articles By the Author
Europe and Higher-Ed. Reform -- Lessons for the U.S.
This May the European Union will begin planning for a second decade of purposeful higher education reform. Dubbed the Bologna Process in honor of the Italian city where, in 1999, the Ministers of Education from 29 European countries defined a common reform agenda, the Bologna Process has gone a long way towards creating commonality and interchangeability among and between Europe’s competing systems of higher education. What began slowly, almost haltingly is now being celebrated as a remarkable achievement in multi-national cooperation and reform — leading me, at least, to ask, “What did the Europeans know that those of us who served on the Spellings Commission did not?”
At least four characteristics of the Bologna Process are worth noting in answer to that question.
First it was conceived at the outset as a multi-year process. No need to hurry. No need to try to fix everything is a single year of frantic activity.
Second, it was a process explicitly linking four sets of key actors: Ministers of Education, university leaders, European Union bureaucrats, and policy wonks. The latter helped define the issues and shape the agenda. The EU bureaucracy staffed the meetings, making sure that schedules were kept and deliverables delivered. University leaders served as much-needed brakes, making sure that what the policy wonks proposed had institutional traction. The Ministers of Education provided the political muscle.
Third, rhetorical excesses were kept to a minimum. The underlying idea was to support and extend the value of the continent’s universities rather than hold them up to public scrutiny.
Fourth, it was a disciplined and focused process. A limited number of goals were set with clear benchmarks leading to verifiable implementations.
If nothing else it makes for an interesting parlor game to speculate whether a Bologna-like template might have resulted in more reform of U.S. higher education than resulted from the work of the Spellings Commission.
More on Friday …
Posted at 08:15:29 AM on April 1, 2008 | All postings by Bob ZemskyComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Previous: Making Sense of Accountability
Next: Imagine a Spellings Process Rather Than a Commission
The individualism of US people and cultures constantly causes “initiatives” that die from isolation and little “buy in”. All the heroics and theatricality from lone star heroics distract everyone from improving life. Attribution for someone’s career outweighs in the end, all ends other than career ones for individual stars.
I used to be a part of it so it used to make me sick. In recent decades I have been thousands of miles away and find it now a lot more amusing. People pretending to do things alone that cannot ever be done alone!! Only Americans are dumb enough to fall for that stuff. I pity them, George Washington to George Bush—I pity them all.
— Richard Tabor Greene · Apr 2, 04:25 AM · #
I think the most important difference cited is point three: the determination to support and extend the value of universities rather than hold them up to public scrutiny. American “reformers,” largely non-experts, are hung up on “accountability,” but they focus only on the trivia that can be measured quantitatively, losing sight of the heart and soul of the academic enterprise. The application of business models is never appropriate in any non-profit enterprise, especially higher education, yet “accountability” in this country quickly morphs into “productivity,” and those who impose this framework never quite get it when it comes to defining the “product” of colleges and universities. To them the product is an assembly line of quickly turned out human widgets to serve American business at mid and lower level slots. When American reformers lift their sights, and recognize the role universities play in nurturing and extending civilization, they will, perhaps, devise more critically useful models of evaluation.
— /case hardened · Apr 2, 09:08 AM · #
Having taught in public universities in the Netherlands and Italy since 2003, I am much less sanguine about the Bologna Process. It’s a great idea, but the implementation can be, to say the least, very spotty. The entrenched academic establishments don’t necessarily see great benefits to increasing the portability of credits or degrees from one national university system to another. In Italy, at least, universities even can be quite resistant to recognizing degrees issued by other universities within the national system. In order to complete the MA-equivalent degree, students often have to take exams in the subjects they studied while completing their BA-equivalent degree, if they have switched universities.
— Eric Terzuolo · Apr 2, 02:43 PM · #
Chronicle of Higher Education April 2, 2008. Response.
Bob Zemsky is quite right to suggest that the Bologna Process is an innovative and collegiate approach to higher education reform, and that it proceeds by developing commonalities on the basis of a policy-making approach involving key actors. It is interesting that he thinks that its policy development methods compare favourably with your recent commission. However in the interests of understanding the Bologna Process better, I have three points on his piece.
First: ‘Bologna’ is a European, but not an EU, process to create a European Higher Education Area. The ministers of education who provide the political muscle in meetings every two years are from 46 countries, not just the EU27. This Europe consists of non-EU members like Norway and Switzerland, the Balkan states, and Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan. It also encompasses the Holy See and mini states such as Andorra. They are all signed up to the Council of Europe, an organisation which requires its members to develop and respect democratic values.
Point 2. It is the essence of the Bologna process that it is political cooperation and not EU instruments which drive the reform, since implementation is by national governments within the frameworks of their own systems. Each country has an official and an academic representative on the Bologna steering group. University leadership and students, and the Council of Europe are among the consultative members. The EU Commission, long involved in promoting educational cooperation, and providing developmental funding, has an exceptional status as a full member. A board drawn from the follow up group prepares the communiqué which ministers are asked to agree. The secretariat is provided, not by the EU, but by the country which has offered to host the next ministerial meeting and thus changes every two years: (Norway, 2003-2005; UK, 2005-2007; Belgium. Netherlands and Luxembourg combined, 2007-2009).
Point 3. This process has to be focussed since the ambitious strategy is to create a common European Higher Education Space by 2010. Just think of it: all those countries, all those languages, all that history behind them. Yet all those 46 governments – and the Commission with its interest in a stronger knowledge economy – think working within a broad-brush European framework of recognition and quality assurance, and a common undergraduate and postgraduate structure will be beneficial for their systems. What is the secret? One element, I am sure, is national pride and the feeling – in small countries especially, and in those with little used languages – that the common structure of the EHEA at last brings some fine universities and some fine academics onto a world stage. But as the comment from Italy, above, indicates, lots depends on local situations.
— Anne Corbett · Apr 3, 09:07 AM · #
This just goes to show that having a bureaucracy that is not immediately subject to the whims of partisan politicians can be beneficial under certain circumstances. Not only can such an institution focus on actually doing its job as opposed to becoming a bludgeon for promoting the ideology of one of the political parties, especially when the one in power just so happens to see government as more of a hindrance than a help and would prefer to enforce its radical free market, tax less, spend more ideology instead of improving higher education, or anything else, for that matter.
— James · Apr 7, 11:11 AM · #
Are Texans known for their diplomacy and tact?
— Wayne · Apr 7, 05:55 PM · #