Bologna declaration

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

The Bologna declaration is the main guiding document of the Bologna process. It was adopted by ministers of education of 29 European countries at their meeting in Bologna in 1999.

It proposed a European Higher Education Area in which students and graduates could move freely between countries, using prior qualifications in one country as acceptable entry requirements for further study in another.

The principal aims agreed were:

  1. "Adoption of a system of easily readable and comparable degrees". That is to say, countries should adopt common terminology and standards
  2. "Adoption of a system essentially based on two main cycles, undergraduate and graduate. Access to the second cycle shall require successful completion of first cycle studies, lasting a minimum of three years. The degree awarded after the first cycle shall also be relevant to the European labour market as an appropriate level of qualification. The second cycle should lead to the master and/or doctorate degree as in many European countries."

The Bergen meeting subsequently refined the second point, and produced a three-cycle framework of qualifications, which in the UK terminology (adopted, at least partially, by many European countries) would be Bachelor for a first degree of three years, Master for subsequent study, and Doctor for a degree which has "made a contribution through original research that extends the frontier of knowledge by developing a substantial body of work".

The Bologna declaration has later been followed up by the Prague communiqué (2001), the Berlin communiqué (2003) and the Bergen communiqué (2005). The most recent meeting took place in London in 2007[3] and produced the London Communiqué.

The Bologna 6th Ministerial Conference will take place in Leuven/Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium on 28-29 April 2009.

Search Wikisource Wikisource has original text related to this article:

There is much criticism of the Bologna Declaration, which is seen by some experts as a neo-liberal attempt to impose the logic of the market on European Higher Education.[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Lorenz on the Bologna Process.[1] Questions have also been posed, e.g. by Prof. Hauke Bronckhorst, as to the democratic legitimacy of the Bologna Process.[2]

[edit] External links


Stub icon This government-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_declaration"