What is the Use of Bologna in National Reform?

Few national higher education systems or policies can claim to operate in total isolation from their international environment. Systemic changes and policy shifts in higher education are linked in various ways to what is happening in the international arena, as well as to developments in other national systems. This chapter discusses one such linkage; it explores how a process of higher education policy co- operation at the European level, the Bologna Process, has impacted in practice on the comprehensive reform of Norwegian higher education of the late 1990s and the beginning of this century known as the Quality Reform; and questions the extent to which the reform proposals that are part of the Quality Reform are a response to the Bologna Process, and how ‘Bologna’ was used in the context of this national reform.

The Norwegian higher education system is located on the northern periphery of Europe. Given this location and the ongoing Europeanisation of higher education, the Norwegian government and other stakeholders concerned with higher education are putting increasing political emphasis on the importance of internationalising higher education, and especially on strengthening its ties with Europe. In this the Bologna Process, being a part of the Europeanisation development, has received considerable attention. An important assumption in this chapter is that the nature of the peripheral status of Norway might have conditioned the use, and therefore ultimately the effects of the Bologna Process in the Norwegian Quality Reform.