BOLOGNA AND THE STATES OF LIMBO
The Times Higher Education Supplement
July 3, 2014
Another trip, another capital. But the incentives are strong to take
the long night flights to and from Yerevan, capital of Armenia. Next
year, up to 48 ministers of countries participating in the Bologna
Process, and their entourages as well, will meet here to make a
decisive choice. The European Higher Education Area is proof that
nations across the European region can take measures to make their
systems compatible, and maybe even more comparable, without forcibly
invoking the law. But can the EHEA be sustained under the framework
of the Bologna Process? After 15 years of developing coordination,
is Bologna’s work done? Or are there new avenues to explore?
The conference I am attending – that of EURASHE (the European
Association of Higher Education Institutions that offer professionally
oriented courses) – is an important dry run for the big Bologna
occasion. It attracts the Armenian prime minister, as well as the
country’s minister of education and the big names in Armenian higher
education. It is also a chance to see some of the things that are
institutionally ingrained about Bologna and what originality Armenia
brings.
Armenia is making a regional issue its contribution to this Bologna
phase: what might be done to support higher education systems in the
fragile countries that not only had their economies broken in 1991
with the collapse of the Soviet Union but also bear the burden of
non-recognition as states. They include the breakaway Transnistria
region of Moldova and, looming over Armenian politics, the territory
of Nagorno-Karabakh, disputed to the point of a war with Azerbaijan.
Gayane Harutyunyan, the head of the Bologna Secretariat, speaks with
feeling about “the people in the non-recognised countries who need
quality higher education more than ever”. This generation of students
and academics need to know that they can cross borders with their
degrees recognised. So far, with help from the Council of Europe,
and backing from Bologna Process co-chairmen, study sessions have been
held with senior higher education figures in Moldova and Transnistria.
This may sound a small step. But it seems to me that the initiative is
important in two respects. The Bologna framework has helped Armenia
to turn a specific national problem, the Karabakh, into the generic
problem of non-recognised territories. And Bologna methods ensure
that the policy initiatives for higher education such as this have
wider buy-in. Ms Harutyunyan’s secretariat will have secured support
from all 10 of the revolving Bologna Process co-chairs between 2012
and 2015: the Republic of Ireland and Croatia, Lithuania and Georgia,
Greece and Kazakhstan, Italy and the Holy See and, in the run-up to
the coming conference, Latvia and Iceland.
Given the huge geopolitical tensions in this part of the world and
the narratives of Armenian history emphasising victimhood, it seems
a step with creative potential to think of quality higher education
as a right from which no individual should be cut off, whatever the
stand of their government or their regional overlords. Let us hope
the Bologna ministers take a similar stand.
Anne Corbett is the author of Universities and the Europe of Knowledge
(2005). She is an associate of the London School of Economics.