Bologna Process

ESEC and the Bologna Process

Everyone knows that the period to adapt higher education studies to the Bologna Process is about to end. With 2010-2011 as the goal, the 46 countries that signed the Process are to adopt the strategies laid out in the Process for such adaption and to complete the restructuring of their methodologies and courses of study.

But, does everyone know exactly what the Bologna Process is?

The Bologna Process is an accord between 46 countries that aims to establish a European Higher Education Area based on cooperation between their Ministries and Universities and with the support of other international institutions. This accord sets forth general principles, such as the division of higher education in three cycles (undergraduate, master and doctorate), a single system to assess programmes (ECTS), lifelong learning and so on, which each county is to adapt according to its needs.

This European Higher Education Area will facilitate the mobility of students, prepare them for their future career and support their personal development by putting special emphasis on the quality of studies offered and allowing schools to make their educational offering much more dynamic, thus respecting academic guarantees and adapting them to the true needs of businesses and society.

The basis of the reform is the ECTS (European Credit Transfer System), which is used to standardise the evaluation procedures of studies at different universities and in different countries.

Studies will be divided into three basic periods. The UNDERGRADUATE (Bachelor) degree will consist of 180 or 240 ECTS credits, depending on the system adopted by the school in question, and it will give students the general training they must acquire. The MASTER degree will be comprised of between 60 and 120 credits, depending on the school granting the degree. Lastly, the DOCTORATE degree will be the only degree not governed by the credit system, but will instead consist of studies that will be used as the basis for a period of research leading to the preparation and presentation of a final thesis. Students who have completed the first two cycles must demonstrate that they have earned a total of 300 ECTS credits.

The credit system will be used to organise curriculums, making it possible to compare them with one another and thus allowing universities to more easily manage students’ transcripts. Former two-year and four-year undergraduate degrees (Diplomaturas and Licenciaturas, respectively) will disappear, giving way to the above-mentioned degrees: Undergraduate (Bachelor), Master and Doctorate. These new degrees will be associated with one of the five branches of knowledge defined as: