

Universities in Europe and the Bologna process - nopinsight
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13527558&source=hptextfeature

======
arrrg
Well, it’s complicated.

The restructuring caused some chaos, quite a few problems and for many
Professors to be unhappy. Universities are still reluctant to give one credit
for things done somewhere else. Many universities offer increasingly
specialized study courses. So what became supposedly easily possible for the
first time due to the Bologna process (I’m talking about Germany here) –
switching universities after the Bachelor (didn’t exist before in any way,
shape or form in Germany) – became at the same time very difficult because
nobody offers (exactly) the same.

Much of this is Professors fretting about additional work – they have to talk
to all those strange Bachelor people and actually negotiate about what they
are going to give them credit for (“Oh come on, your seminar on medieval
literature doesn’t count as fulfilling your modern literature requirement!“).

I’m quite happy until now (first generation “Bologna”, now in the fourth
semester), but the Bachelor’s degree seems pretty useless here in Germany. I’m
not sure if anyone would hire someone with a Bachelor’s degree in Germany at
the moment – we didn’t have anything like that before, companies are not
exactly sure what having a Bachelor’s degree means. And my university seems
even to think that it is necessary to write "Equivalent of the (old) diploma"
on their Master’s degree.

Was the Bologna process useful? – Hm, I’m really not sure right now. Ask me in
five years.

~~~
CrLf
Well, I'm not really sure the effect of the Bologna process in Portugal,
because I finished my degree still in the "old" model. But I do know that it
is a source of confusion.

In the old model there were four degrees: Bachelor (3 years), Licenciado (5
years), Master (6+ years) and Doctorate. Now we have Licenciado (3 years),
Master (5 years) and Doctorate (6+ years). This means "Licenciados" and
"Masters" from the old model must disambiguate by adding "(n years)" as not to
be confused with the new (shorter) versions. Madness.

~~~
Luc
A small price to pay for allowing cross-border competition, I think.It would
be great if this were to allow universities to focus more on their strengths,
instead of having to offer every degree under the sun. It would allow European
universities to improve their worldwide rankings while still remaining
free/affordable.

------
ovi256
Back in 2005, the ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) and Erasmus program
already worked perfectly - I have spent one year away in Spain without any
problems (except too much partying which bombed my grades). And many of my
colleagues did the same.

------
dejan
I am surprised how many Europeans there are here. There just has to be done
something in Europe so that we do not turn to US for developing ideas...
Greetings to all European hackers! :)

