On 7 November, the first 17 alliances of the European Initiative for Higher Education were launched in Brussels in the presence of around 800 representatives of universities, university associations, students, national ministries and the European Commission. EEA President Michael Murphy addressed them. In the 1980s, Europeans decided to facilitate the transition from upper secondary to post-secondary education throughout Europe by declaring (under the auspices of UNESCO) that all individual upper secondary school leaving certificates were comparable. This decision allowed holders of the French baccalaureate (for example) to access British universities, holders of the German baccalaureate to access French universities, etc. Thus, the mobility of European participants was theoretically guaranteed without changing anything. At that time, it was also agreed to reform higher education. Although the declaration was prepared without formal affiliation to the EU institutions, the European Commission (which has supported European projects such as the Tuning and TEEP projects) plays an important role in the implementation of the process. Most countries do not fit into the framework and use their traditional systems. The process, which will lead to bilateral agreements between countries and institutions recognising each other`s degrees, moves from a strict convergence of time spent on qualifications to a competence-based system that will include a bachelor`s and postgraduate department (with a bachelor`s degree in the first and a master`s degree and doctorate in the second).
For two decades, the EEA has been closely following the latest trends in the European higher education landscape. Through a series of questionnaires addressed to its many academic members, as well as focus groups, site visits and interviews, the EEA collects the most up-to-date data in the field. After a detailed analysis, the association presents reliable and up-to-date information on the development of European fields of higher education and research. The Bologna Process is a series of ministerial meetings and agreements between European countries aimed at ensuring the comparability of standards and the quality of higher education diplomas. [1] The European Higher Education Area was created within the framework of the Lisbon Recognition Convention. It was named after the University of Bologna, where the Bologna Declaration was signed in 1999 by the ministers of education of 29 European countries. The process was opened to other countries in the framework of the Council of Europe`s European Cultural Convention[2], and government meetings were held in Prague (2001), Berlin (2003), Bergen (2005), London (2007), Leuven (2009), Budapest-Vienna (2010), Bucharest (2012), Yerevan (2015) and Paris (2018). The main objective of the Bologna Process is to create a European Higher Education Area and to promote the European higher education system worldwide in order to increase international competitiveness. In order to ensure the comparability of European higher education systems, the Bologna Declaration set out a number of main objectives, the progress of which was monitored and managed by a series of ministerial conferences between 1999 and 2018. In 1999, education ministers from 29 European countries agreed in Bologna, Italy, on the vision of a European Higher Education Area in which higher education should follow common principles to ensure high quality and comparability. The Bologna Process is a process aimed at ensuring the comparability of standards and the quality of higher education diplomas, launched on 19 June 1999, when ministers from 29 European countries met in Bologna to sign an important agreement, the Bologna Declaration, which officially marked the beginning of this process.
As a result of the Bologna Process, new Licenciatura (Bachelor`s degrees) were organised in 2005 at universities and universities of applied sciences in Portugal. Once a four- to six-year programme equivalent to 300 ECTS, it is now a three-year undergraduate cycle and the only requirement for the two-year second cycle, which confers a master`s degree. Some Bologna courses are integrated five- or six-year programs that award a joint master`s degree, a common practice in medicine. In engineering, despite the use of two cycles, an engineer can only be licensed after a master`s degree. Master`s degrees obtained after five or six years of study correspond to the old bachelor`s degrees known as licenciatura. The new licenciatura, acquired after three years of study, corresponds to the Bacharelato hired awarded by polytechnicians in the 1970s to the early 2000s (roughly equivalent to an extended associate degree). The old and new master`s degrees are the first university degree before a doctorate, and the old and new licenciatura are bachelor`s degrees. Prior to the signing of the Bologna Declaration, the Magna Charta Universitatum was issued at a meeting of university rectors to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the University of Bologna (and European universities) in 1988.
A year before the declaration, Education Ministers Claude Allegre (France), Jürgen Rüttgers (Germany), Luigi Berlinguer (Italy) and Baroness Blackstone (UNITED Kingdom) signed the Sorbonne Declaration in Paris in 1998, in which they pledged to “harmonise the architecture of the European higher education system”. [3] 48 countries participate in the Bologna Process. [4] The University of Bologna (Università di Bologna, UNIBO), founded in 1088, was the first university and is the oldest in the world. It was the first place of study to use the term universitas for the societies of students and masters that defined the institution in Bologna, Italy. .
