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The Europeans are coming! Are you ready?
The Bologna Accord, a sweeping educational reform planned for full implementation by 2010, is already influencing the European graduate management market, creating new degree distinctions, new potential applicants for graduate management programs, more options for students, and a new market for graduate management programs throughout Europe. But U.S. business schools need to be aware of and prepared for the reforms, as well, because soon the results will affect their applicant pools. How? Why? What is the Bologna Accord? Graduate Management News has the story.
What Is the Bologna Accord?
In June 1999, 29 European countries signed a document called the Bologna Declaration, agreeing to reform higher education to achieve the following aims:
- create a system of comparable and understandable degrees throughout the European Union
- establish a clear and standard division between undergraduate and graduate studies
- promote student mobility among different fields of study, institutions, and nations
- develop a quality-assurance process and governing body to ensure standard qualifications and quality throughout participating countries
- define a European focus for higher education
Often called the Bologna Accord, the reform agreement has since been adopted by 11 more countries, bringing the total number of signatories to 40. With the exception of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, San Morino, and the Ukraine, all of Europe is on board. The agreement promises to simplify degree qualifications and nomenclatures, offer more educational choice and mobility to European students, and bring many more potential applicants into the graduate management pipeline. Together, the reforms represent an opportunity for Continental European graduate management education programs to challenge the more mature U.S. and U.K. programs’ market share.
Before the Accord, there was little uniformity in European higher education. Different countries’ universities awarded different degrees, and it was not always clear which degrees were equivalent to one other. These distinctions made it difficult for graduate program admissions offices and potential employers across borders to assess an applicant’s level of education without researching degree qualifications—an onerous task, given the wide variety of diplomas even within a single European nation.
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