The Bologna Process: Emergence, Goals, and Developments

Abstract

Higher education can be a politically sensitive issue as universities historically have played a crucial role in nation and state-building by supplying states with manpower, building national consciousness and identity integrating national elites, and providing research capacity for development (Olsen and Maassen, 2007). Transnational cooperation in this policy field has been difficult, yet in recent decades, European universities and other institutions providing higher education have begun in parallel to reform their program structures and engaged in setting up quality assurance systems. Most recently, these developments can be connected to the so-called Bologna Process, whose name is derived from the Bologna Declaration drafted and adopted by European education ministers³.