The Blue Monkey Review

In general terms, the Bologna Declaration of 1999 provides a vision for higher education reform in Europe. National education systems sign on voluntarily, but by signing on they make a commitment to carry out reforms by the year 2010. To me it seemed that the Bologna reforms would make European higher education very similar to the system in the United States. It will establish two tiers, a lower three-year program and a higher- level program of two years. Some systems already use the term Bachelor and Master degrees. But the reform will entail reducing some current lower-level programs and perhaps enhancing the higher-level programs. In Montenegro we currently have a four-year program at the lower level. I don't know how our graduate programs work.

More fundamental than distinguish the types of programs will be establishing a credit system. Currently in many European universities testing makes up the key to earning a degree. Consequently, tests and degrees are separate. You take a course, then you take a test. But if you fail, you can take the test again. And again. In the new system, courses will carry specific credits and the test will be part of the course. If you fail the test associated with the course (and you do get one additional chance, including in my course this semester in American Civilization) you must repeat the course to earn the credits.

The goal of moving to a credit system, however, is probably the fundamental goal of the Bologna movement (at least, this is what Craig told us and he seems to have a lot of experience with this). Credits will be transferable, and consequently students will become highly mobile within European higher education. Students can take courses in Montenegro, for instance, then transfer those credits to an equivalent program in a university in Spain and continue their degrees there.

But, in order to make credits transferable, coursework and programs must become far more transparent in terms of their requirements and levels of achievement for successful completion. This will sound very, very familiar to anyone in American higher education, especially anyone in administration. All programs will now go through a process of European-wide accreditation, and each part of the curriculum will have to meet peer review standards. This does not mean programs will be standardized, but any element of a program will need to make sense within the goals established by the program faculty and the university.

Transparency means formulating goals in terms that, again, will seem only too familiar to American academics. An English program in Niksic must have clear criteria for admission, clear rationales for each of its courses, and clear, measurable standards for achievement within the program. After two years of study here, for instance, I might not have all the requirements for an English degree at a university in Germany. But my credits will be accepted there and I can make up required courses lacking in my program. Under the new system, if I earn a bachelor's degree in an accredited program here, I can enter a master's program in the same field anywhere.

My cause for concern about European higher education is that this will create as free market for talented academics. Eastern European and Balkan scholars will be sucked into Germany, France, England and the other wealthy countries. Craig dismissed this as a concern. Why not? he said. As I as ee it the problem is that it potentially deprives students in poorer countries of better scholars from their own countries. Well, we have to deal with the ownership society at home, so why should the Europeans be exempted?

It is interesting, again because it is so familiar to the part of me that is the administrator, that one of the goals of this thorough reform of the system is to make graduates of European educational programs more employable. We strive for that employability goal in all of our programs at Seton Hill University, though how well we meet that goal remains a question for us. What do European employers look for? At least in Romania, according to Craig, the main skills that employers seek are computer skills, knowledge of Romanian commercial law, and facility with English language. Take Romanian law out of the list and these are the same skills that a vice president at a major U.S. firm told me he wants in new employees. [In fact, a high level of verbal skill appears so regularly in the requirements of employers that we should probably scrap all of our current curriculum and remake it all with language skills built in from the beginning.]

This was a presentation to teachers in an English language program, so much of it dealt with how to evaluate student achievement in a language program. Again, I found the topic very interesting. One of Craig's most telling examples concerned a university in a Balkan that I won't name but which was not Montenegro. All first year (first semester) and third year (fifth semester) English students were tested in oral and written proficiency, and the instruments were evaluated by outside experts. What they concluded was that there was no significant difference between the two groups. Clearly, this comes as bad news for any program. This suggests (more than suggests) that programs need to examine their instruction and their goals, and they need to establish means of evaluating student achievement that will be both transparent and transferable.

We had a little time to look at the Common European Framework Standards for language proficiency. Unfortunately, I had to leave for my first Serbian class to find out how little I knew of Serbian grammar. But the standards provide a good example of a valuable rubric for language learning. This could become a powerful instrument even for language programs in the U.S., most of which follow ACTFL guidelines for language proficiency. But U.S. students will sometimes need to match skills with European students. But I also wonder if these levels could find a useful role in evaluating English language skills in our Humanities programs at home. Would most of our students meet the C1 level of accuracy that requires that they consistently maintain "a high degree of grammatical accuracy; errors are rare, difficult to spot and generally corrected when they do occur"?

I know it sounds like I'm making trouble. But reality knocks at the door right now. U.S. universities will soon enough have to meet the demand that they demonstrate how good a job they do at what they claim to do.

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Note added Feb. 19: Today I went to a workshop for teacher mentors at the campus here in Niksic. Craig was there and we talked a little more about the Bolonga Declaration. He said that initially the U.S. Department of State opposed the reforms, seeing it as a way for European higher education to become more competitive with American higher ed. Right now there are hundreds of thousands of European, Chinese, Indian, and Japanese students going to study in the U.S. every year. This is an area where the international system clearly favors the U.S. But, with Craig's prodding, State has supported the movement toward the new system. American academics participate in helping set up European accreditation systems.