Washington, D.C.
While it’s far from certain whether the U.S.-based higher education accountability movement will see colleges and universities nationally instituting learning standards and other accountability measures, one Washington-based higher education policy research organization is taking a hard look at the global restructuring of higher education in recent years and determining what lessons might apply in the United States.
In the second issue brief of a five-part study being developed by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), the brief, “Learning Accountability from Bologna: a Higher Education Policy Primer,” reports on how the restructuring of 46 European higher education systems since 1999 could yield important policies around student learning that are applicable in the United States. IHEP officials released the issue brief on Monday.
“The U.S. higher education system, the world’s most complex, is imperfectly struggling with accountability issues, yet the largest restructuring of higher education the world has ever seen has addressed accountability in ways we have not even imagined,” says Dr. Clifford Adelman, a IHEP senior associate and the author of the “Learning Accountability from Bologna” report.
Under what is known as the ‘Bologna Process,’ higher education restructuring is taking place across Europe, including students speaking 23 major languages from Iceland to Turkey. Some 4,000 institutions enrolling 16 million students, a size similar in scope to the U.S. system of higher education, have been included in the restructuring.
The key goals of the Bologna Process are as follows:
• Every degree is publicly defined so that it’s known what it means in terms of the demonstration of knowledge; the application of knowledge; fluency in the use of information; breadth, depth, and effectiveness of communication; and degree of autonomy gained for subsequent learning.
