Herodot Newsletter

The ministerial conference in Berlin on the Bologna Process

The ministerial communique can be found at:
http://www.bologna-berlin2003.de/pdf/Communique1.pdf

Main Outcomes
1. The main outcome was that the ministers underlined the importance of all Bologna objectives but they set theree priority areas for the next period until 2005:

– By 2005 each country should have established quality assurance systems which should include accreditation, vertification or a similar procedure at the end,

– By 2005 each country should have started to implement of a two-tier higher education system (Bachelors - Masters)

– Maximise efforts to establish better recognition of degrees and study periods and at least as a minimum all countries should have ratified the Lisbon convention by 2005.

2. The Communiqué says that a set of common criteria and procedures for Quality Assurance should be elaborated, to be done by ENQA with the cooperation of other institutions. In 2005 ENQA will report to ministers through the follow-up group.

3. Bologna cannot be implemented á la carte, and that all countries have to work
towards all objectives. - top

4. It is stated that in 2005 there will be an in-depth report alongh the 3 priority areas and that countries will provide access to the information needed for this study. So there will be quantitaive measurement of the progress.

5. Involvement of HE staff. It is underlined that the process has to be embedded deeply into the institutional policies and it should become widely known among staff and students – this is a condition for sustainable progress.

6. Qualifications frameworks. Ministers promised that they will elaborate qualifications frameworks for their own countries. Qualifications will be described in terms of level, worload,learning outcomes and profile. And – they agree that an overarching framework will be elaborated for the European Higher Education Area which would be flexible to accommodate the different qualifications from all countries and serve as a "translating machine” between the systems.

7. Joint degrees. The ministers promised to themselves that they will look through their national legislation to identify and remove these

8. The Bologna process was substantially enlarged: as could have been foreseen Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, FYR Macedonia joined. In addition, after changing the criteria ministers also admitted Andorra and Russia. So the number of countries is currently 40. The ministers in the Communiqué also promise to help the new countries catch up since the first 30 countries have already been working for 4 years now and they have reached substantial progress.

9. Next ministerial meeting will take place in bergen, Norway in May 2005 - top