Mapping the Goals of the Bologna Process

Abstract

The ratification of the Bologna Process in 1999 has led to fundamental changes in the European higher education area. After more than a decade of Bologna reform efforts, the question arises whether and to what degree the declared goals of the Bologna Process (e.g. increasing student mobility and employability) have been achieved in the educational practice, i.e. on the individual university level. This desire points to the question of what these goals exactly are, how they are structured and how to eventually prioritize among them. The search for a comparable systematisation of the reforms objectives unveils only its absence.

This paper presents the work of higher engineering education scientists on the development of a comprehensive understanding of the Bologna Process objectives, their interconnections and practical measures in order to make this large scale reform accessible to the controlling of European universities’ decision making. To this aim, the objectives are mapped in the form of a software based system model, according to the theory of System Dynamics. The elements of the model are fully based on the official Bologna declarations, memoranda as well as expert literature. It therefore claims to represent the state of the art on the goals of the Bologna Process. For the first time this system model structures the Bologna goals ordered by levels of hierarchy and it quantifies their dependencies on the basis of the System Dynamics approach. The validity of the model has been assessed based on qualitative and quantitative data, generated in a study involving 29 German experts in the field of higher education specialized on the Bologna Process. Further research will concentrate on a practical application of this system model, including the evaluation of the model’s statements. Ultimately, the model’s insights will enable European universities to estimate their respective degrees of Bologna goal attainment and to identify key measures for individual improvement.