It’s not so much when Bologna will arrive in the U.S. . . . but how.

Cliff Adelman, Institute for Higher Education Policy, Aug. 12, 2009

I trust you can all spell Bologna now, and know that it is neither

• A processed meat, nor• An old, boring Italian city that was

never considered for your vacation itinerary.

But for the uninitiated, perhaps we should consider some myths about what the Bologna Process is/is not.

Myth #1: Oh, all that stuff is for the Euros; we don’t have to pay any attention.

• 18 countries (with 182 universities) in Latin America have taken on the Tuning process in 12 disciplines;

• Australia has developed and introduced Diploma Supplements;

• The countries of the Maghreb have changed over to the Bologna degree cycles.

If the rest of the world is picking up pieces of Bologna, it’s foolish not to pay attention.

Myth #2: Bologna is only about 3-year bachelor’s degrees. Big deal!

• The degree structure changes largely repackage old (“legacy”) long degrees into bachelor’s and master’s components

• While 3+2 is the norm, one also finds 4+1, 3 ½ + 1 ½, 6-year degrees in medicine, and

EWNI holding to its existing 3+1.• Where they exist, “short cycle” degrees

became part of the bachelor’s.The true change in Bologna degree cycles is not

about either nominal or “notional” time.

Bologna “action lines” and mechanisms: a complex, interwoven set across 46 nations

• Degree cycles (easily readable/comparable)• Qualification frameworks• Common credit system (ECTS)• Diploma Supplements• Quality assurance• “Social dimension” (access and participation)• “External dimension” (includes mobility)

. . .and more, but these are the core.

Some of this has been successful, some less so, but it all illustrates

• That massive restructuring and reform is possible;

• That you don’t need governments to drive it: this is a voluntary undertaking;

• That nothing of significance is easy or instant: they’ve been at it for a decade and know they have another decade to go. The fact of 23 major languages in play doesn’t exactly speed things up.

What is the point of learning from other nations?

• Convergence. It happens. Macroeconomists have demonstrated this time and time again: nations that learn from others grow, those that don’t, don’t.

• Differential perspective. Other countries address problems similar to yours. Understanding their perspectives inevitably leads to recasting your own approaches to these challenges in ways you would not otherwise have considered at all. You have epiphanies!

It’s our turn to learn; we are now registered for the course;

And once we start learning, the epiphanies follow, and change begins. It’s happening now.

Our learning starts with “accountability.” We know what it means, right?

• Post your graduation rates, demographic mix, time-to-degree, job placement rates.

• Post some NSSE or CCSSE data on how much your students said they did X or liked Y

• Throw in a test or two to show how much a random sample of student volunteers improved in “critical thinking” between entrance and exit.

• You’ve done it! Everybody goes home assured that this is what higher education is about.

• You resolved the issue---and did it in 18 months!

Bologna offers a more justifiable, complex, and transparent template for accountability,

consisting of:• Qualification frameworks: Pan-European and

national• Tuning, the disciplinary qualification frameworks• A student-centered credit currency tied to

qualifications and curriculum reform.• Diploma Supplements: documentation of student

attainment.• Creation of a “zone of mutual trust” by

transparency and harmonization, hence enhancing recognition of degrees and mobility for students.

Content counts in every piece of the Bologna accountability loop

• You see it in all 7 completed models of national qualification frameworks (Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, France, Scotland, EWNI).

• Discipline-based benchmarking, e.g. in Accounting and History

• Credits and curriculum reform in the music conservatories

• Combining credits and challenge levels in Scotland.

The Macro level: Degree Qualification Frameworks

• What does each level of degree we award mean? What does it represent in terms of student learning? How does it differ from the levels immediately below and immediately above it? Common sense questions.

• U.S. arguments on this field stagnate on authority and process issues; under Bologna, everything is about content.

• And at all levels of the qualifications frameworks of Bologna, the criteria of content are ratcheted up from previous levels.

5 learning outcome constructs in Bologna qualification frameworks

• Knowledge and understanding• Application of knowledge and understanding• Fluency in use of increasingly complex data and

information• Breadth and depth of topics communicated;

range of audiences for communication• Degree of autonomy gained for subsequent

learning.We may not choose the same 5, or the same wide-

angle diction, but choice is coming. . . .

In the pan-European Qualifications framework, these features get the

ratcheting-up treatment for• Short-cycle degrees (our Associate’s),

where they exist• 1st cycle degrees (our Bachelor’s)• 2nd cycle degrees (Master’s)• 3rd cycle (Doctoral)With enough space and flexibility to account

for intermediate credentials in those countries that offer them (e.g. Sweden, Germany, UK)

Whether pan-European or national,

• the statement for each level is not a goal---it is, at the institution’s choice, a warranty. By inverse logic it says that the student who did not “demonstrate” these levels of knowledge, application, competence, etc. did not earn a degree.

• Whether or not a warranty is issued, in terms of quality assurance, each institution must thus be able to “demonstrate” that its students have “demonstrated.”

• . . .and that means all of its graduating students, not merely the 100 who volunteered to take a standardized test.

Watch the ratchet! The degree is awarded “to students who. . .”

• Short cycle: have demonstrated knowledge and understanding of a field of study that builds upon general secondary education and is typically at a level supported by advanced textbooks. . . .

• 1st cycle: . . .and is typically at level that, whilst supported by advanced textbooks, includes some aspects that will be informed by knowledge of the forefront of their field of study.

• 2nd cycle: . . .knowledge and understanding that is founded upon and extends and/or enhances that typically associated with the Bachelor’s level, and that provides a basis or opportunity for originality in developing and/or applying ideas, often within a research context.

No matter what page you turn in the Bologna portfolio,

you will find this type of “ratcheting up” of content and

performance thresholds.

National Qualification Framework versions: Ireland’s vertical

• 10 levels from elementary school to doctoral• More complex criterion-referenced constructs,

e.g.

Knowledge: breadth

Knowledge: kind

Know-how and skill: range

Know-how and skill: selectivity

And the same ratchet treatment.

When one examines it in detail, it is obvious. . .

the Irish approach can help connect pre-collegiate to higher education in a

seamless, aligned path.

A natural, yet wary appeal of QFs, and we’ve had our first discussion of

consequence• The appeal is obvious: we have no common

reference points in the U.S. for what our degrees mean, and none of the extant “accountability” systems provide them.

• Other countries are becoming a lot more straightforward, honest, transparent about this, and that is embarrassing.

• There will probably be 2 or 3 more discussions over the next year, each with an expanding group of stake-holders.

How we talked about QFs

• In ways to distinguish them from wish lists.

• Under the challenge of our institutional autonomy mantra.

• With the challenge of eliciting voluntary endorsement.

• Consistent gravitation toward the discipline-level illustration.

And that’s why “Tuning” comes first in the U.S.

• Faculty understand learning outcomes in the discipline before they understand generic outcomes.

• Faculty are trained and organized in the disciplines.

• Faculty are more likely to respond to the task of identifying common reference points for student learning in their fields.

So when Lumina asked for the best entry point to test the

potential of Bologna in the U.S.

the answer was a no-brainer!

The Euros may have started with degree qualification frameworks

but for us, QFs are a logical outgrowth of Tuning, not the other

way around.

Tuning: disciplinary frameworks from the ground up

• Created by faculty, not ministers;• 1st round (2001) with 9 disciplines, 138

universities, 16 countries; • 2nd round (2005) added 16 disciplines;• The most noted case of adaptation outside

Europe: Tuning Latin America (ALFA) with 12 disciplines, 182 universities, 18 countries.

What does “Tuning” in a discipline mean and do?

• After a consultation survey with employers, former students, faculty, sets up a “common language” for expressing what a curriculum in the discipline aims to do,

• But does not prescribe the means of doing it.• You get “reference points,” not

standardization of content, sequence, and delivery.

• There is no straightjacket, but there is “convergence.”

Example: the Business group definition of a firm as a “value chain” results in:

• A curriculum content map• “Subject specific skills and competences” as learning

outcomes to match the map, and set out as core knowledge supporting knowledge communication skills • The statements are not specified, but the distribution

is: 50% core knowledge, 10 % economics, 5 % each for quantitative methods, law, and IT. Notice: that does not add to 100%---on purpose.

Problems of language in Tuning

Faculty are not accustomed to writing criterion-referenced learning outcome statements in their own field, so one finds

statements that are not really operational competences,

extremely vague statements, statements of the obvious, etc.The Euros ran an evaluation in 4 disciplines, and

were brutal about this!

Benchmarking statements as an analogue to Tuning

• Came out of the QAA in the UK, and are available on-line across a wide range of fields

• Faculty are reminded of what they committed themselves to doing. . .

• Students can see in advance---and while in progress---what their academic journey is about

• External observers have a set of guidelines for judging the quality of education and training provided in each discipline.

Put qualification frameworks, Tuning, and benchmarking

together

and you begin to see what accountability might really mean in

a U.S. setting.