Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa.
There is no consensus among American schools about whether to admit applicants who will hold the three-year bachelor’s degrees from European universities that implement the Bologna Accord, according to a survey published by the American Council of Graduate Schools.
Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa.
One of the major changes in European higher education, following the Bologna Accord, will almost surely be the shortening of the total length of the studies. At present, in most continental countries -from Spain to Russia- it takes from 5 to 7 years average to get a university degree. After the implementation of the Bologna accord by 2010, there will be three consecutive degrees, following what, for example, already exists in the UK and Ireland: bachelor (3 or 4 years), master (1 or 2 years) and PhD or doctorate (at least 3 years).
A worrying question for many educational institutions in Europe is whether this segmentation of higher education degrees will prompt students to leave university after obtaining their first degree (bachelor), instead of continuing until they get their masters degree.
If we look at countries that already have a Bologna-alike system of bachelor + master, we get interesting but inconsistent data. In the US, for example, 1,291,900 students received bachelors' diplomas and 606,958 completed graduate programs in 2002, the most recent year for which figures are available. This shows that almost half of those with bachelor degree programs continue on enrolling in masters, maybe because, as Andrew Hacker points out, they "believe that a single degree won't suffice for what they want to do or be". On the other side of the Atlantic, 24% of UK students who hold a bachelor degree go on to further study, 64% of business undergraduates go directly into employment and 12% are not known. In Poland, 62% of the bachelors continue to full master level, according to figures collected by the Association of Business Schools (ABS).
At the latest Board meeting of EQUAL, held in Brussels last Monday, we brainstormed about those figures, presented by Jonathan Slack, and what they tell us for the future of university studies in Europe after Bologna. It seems that trends may vary from one country to another. If an important percentage of the students leave university after getting their bachelors, universities will face an excess of capacity -they will have less students in the second cycle than now- and competition among universities will increase considerably. This would probably be in the benefit of our customers, i.e., students and employers. Wouldn’t it be so?
Della Bradshaw, The Financial Times Business Education editor.
I think any comment on the future of the doctoral market is very timely, especially in light of the Bologna agreement in Europe. Prof Iniguez says he dares not dissect here the difference between PhDs in management and DBAs - very wise indeed!
Isn't the problem that, particularly in the US, DBAs and PhDs in management are exactly the same degree? My understanding of the situation in Harvard University, where the term DBA was coined, is that the PhD and DBA only differ in who awards the degree - if the business school gives the degree it is a DBA, if the department of arts and sciences awards the degree it is a PhD.
Can European schools choose to hijack the term DBA and redefine it for their own ends?
My particular concern in Europe is about the German system of higher education. There university business schools, with 70 or 80 full-time faculty, graduate 100 or more doctoral students a year. The universities claim these doctoral degrees are equivalent to a US or British PhD. But are they?
The Bologna agreement has at its heart the idea of portability of qualifications. How should corporations and academia outside Germany view these doctoral degrees?
Jonathan Slack, Chief Executive of the Association of Business Schools (ABS).
It is widely anticipated that there might be up to 12,000 new ‘Bologna Masters’ degrees by 2010 across the European Higher Education Area. What I have not heard being discussed is the huge additional costs that this will place upon those schools undergoing the Bologna reforms. These costs will arise from: curriculum development, additional quality assurance, new promotions, extra publications, website development to name but a few.
There is another (largely unspoken) element to these reforms and this relates to the likely drop in overall student numbers progressing directly to the Masters level as growing numbers of students exit into employment directly from their first degrees.
Is not the inevitable outcome of rising costs and reduced demand, that business schools in this situation will look to reduce their costs and that staffing is where they will look first? Another likely outcome is that the trend towards, two-year Masters courses, being widely adopted from the Bologna reforms, will be hard to sustain in a global market where one-year Masters are both the norm and highly popular with international students.
Santiago Iñiguez, Decano del Instituto de Empresa Business School
En el Siglo Trece nacieron las primeras universidades de Occidente. Entonces, el idioma de uso común era el latín. Esto ofreció la oportunidad a los entonces profesores y alumnos de enseñar y estudiar en distintas universidades de Europa. Los manuscritos también se escribían en latín, facilitando la rápida expansión del conocimiento. Fue el comienzo del mundo académico occidental.
Por otra parte, el proceso de globalización también produce el efecto complementario de aumentar el interés por idiomas y dialectos locales o nacionales. Es interesante, por ejemplo, que en la actualidad existan en Europa programas MBA que se imparten en galés o vasco, una oferta que no existía hace veinte años.
Eric Beerkens, un comentarista regular en este blog, plantea la cuestión de si el multilingüismo en Europa es una amenaza para la implementación de del proceso de Bolonia. No lo creo así. Cabe esperar que aquellas universidades europeas que quieran atraer a alumnos extranjeros ofrezcan cursos en inglés. Pero parte de la riqueza de la oferta educativa en Europa consistirá en la posibilidad de aprender un segundo o tercer idioma y una cultura diferente.
Dada la preeminencia del idioma inglés en el mundo académico, creo que los primeros beneficiarios del flujo de estudiantes, después de la implementación del proceso de Bolonia, serán las universidades de países de habla inglesa. Sin embargo, la primera serie de rankings sobre programas Masters in Management, publicada recientemente por Financial Times, incluye únicamente a 6 universidades del Reino Unido y de Irlanda entre las primeras 25. ¿Es esto una prueba de que el idioma de un país no será el factor clave para seleccionar una universidad, siempre que los programas de esa universidad se ofrezcan en inglés?
Siete siglos más tarde, nos encontramos en circunstancias semejantes. El proceso de globalización ha convertido al idioma inglés en la “lingua franca”, la lengua más utilizada en el mundo de los negocios y de la enseñanza. De acuerdo con estadísticas del mes de Septiembre pasado, publicadas por “Internet World Stats”,
los cuatro idomas más utilizados en internet son, respectivamente, el inglés (31,7% de los usuarios), el chino (13%), el japonés (8,1%) y el español (6.4%).
Povl Tiedemann, Head of Department, Association of Danish Business Economists.
As the Bologna Process moves on it becomes increasingly important to involve experience and applied knowledge, especially in the areas of quality development, -maintenance and -assessment.
For that reason it is evident to utilize some of the most recently developed ressources, operationalised by EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System), supported by the Advisory Board of EQUAL (European Quality Link) involving 11 institutional and 4 professional associations under the auspices of EFMD (European Foundation of Management Development) Brussels.
The necessity and access for such involvement is clearly stated in:
A) The "Berlin Communiqué" from 19 September 2003, expressed in the paragraph "Promoting the attractiveness of the European Higher Education Area" pointing at attracting appropriate fora for maintaining academic quality.
B) The recommendations of the "Bled Seminar" from 23 October 2004 pointing at strengthening the active participation of e.g. professional associations.
Further it should be noted from the introduction to the findings of the GMAC study of the Bologna Project on the volume and intensity of the Business School sector as driver of the quality improvement initiatives - and the importance in relation to ENQA (European Network of Quality Assurance). In this connection it is also valuable to note that from personal contact with the Commissariate for Education of the European Commission, the Chairman of EQUAL has received positive and supporting attention concerning the role of Management Education as Ice Breaker in the process of quality development in the sector of higher education.
Alltogether - the basis and legitimacy for involving EQUIS / EQUAL as relevant source and inspiration for the BFUG (Bologna Follow Up Group) is evident - thus following the relations established with the Bergen Summit Administration, now to be continued with the London based Summit Administration.
ASSOCIATION OF DANISH BUSINESS ECONOMISTS
Povl Tiedemann
Head of Department
Santiago Iñiguez, Decano del Instituto de Empresa Business School
El proceso de Bolonia creará un mercado europeo de la educación universitaria más eficiente y más competitivo que el actual, parecido al que existe en Estados Unidos. El propósito es que cada estudiante europeo pueda elegir en qué país y en qué universidad estudiar, en función de sus intereses y de sus méritos personales. A su vez, las universidades competirán para ser las mejores en algún área concreta, y pondrán los medios para atraer a los mejores estudiantes y profesores.
La creación de este mercado eficiente de la educación universitaria requiere del cumplimiento de dos requisitos, que aún no se han desarrollado, y que no se contemplan todavía en las discusiones de los principales agentes del proceso de Bolonia: 1) la creación de un mercado eficiente de información; y 2) el desarrollo de instrumentos de financiación que garanticen una asignación eficiente de recursos (programas de becas y de créditos al estudio).
En este post quiero centrarme en el mercado de información que hará posible comparar la oferta educativa en toda Europa. Los economistas explican que para que un mercado actúe de manera eficiente, la información de los consumidores ha de ser perfecta, en términos del conocimiento de los productos, sus características, su precio y el resto de los aspectos relevantes para la compra. Lo cierto es que en la vida real nunca se da esa información perfecta, pero los mercados son más eficientes cuanto mejor es la información. En el caso de la formación universitaria europea en la actualidad, la información está muy fragmentada y existen pocos portales de información que permitan comparar la oferta. En el futuro, los candidatos necesitarán saber, por ejemplo, cuáles son las mejores escuelas por cada área de especialidad; cuáles son los salarios medios que ganan los graduados de cada universidad; la calidad de sus servicios de apoyo; los costes de matrícula y los gastos medios de estancia en una ciudad, etc. Toda esta información es necesaria para poder tomar una decisión razonable y para hacer que el mercado de la formación sea más eficiente; en último término más productivo y más orientado a las necesidades sociales.
Para generar este caudal de información que haga comparable la oferta educativa, existen dos instrumentos que añaden valor al consumidor si se aplican con rigor. Los sistemas de acreditación y los rankings de escuelas. Los primeros otorgan una garantía de calidad al consumidor. En el ámbito de las escuelas de negocios, por ejemplo, las agencias de acreditación internacional más importantes son AACSB, AMBA y EQUIS. En relación con los rankings, tienen el valor de hacer la oferta comparable al consumidor, y son frecuentes en muchos sectores de actividad. Pero éste es un tema que merecerá contribuciones específicas más adelante.
Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.
At the end of his latest post, Dean Danos rightly identifies the crux of the matter about Bologna when he says that it does not address the fundamental issue of adequately funding education. The problem has not even been raised yet in the discussions of the Bologna Follow-up Group (BFUG), i.e. the group of different stakeholders responsible for pushing the Bologna process beyond national governments. The BFUG is working well taking into account the diversity and different agendas of its members and the complexity of its mission. It is currently focused on identifying the key stakeholders and defining quality processes.
However, the key issue is how to finance the implementation of Bologna. There is no calculation of its estimated cost nor knowledge about whether financial support will come from the public, the private sectors, or from both. Strangely enough, there was no item in the 2004 EU (big as it was: 109 billion Euros) devoted to education nor any provision for the implementation of Bologna. You probably know that the major portion of the EU budget is dedicated to agriculture. Imagine what could be done by assigning just a little chunk of it to education!
Every reform in the European Union happens in a gradual and sequential fashion. Take the example of the started accession negotiations with Turkey, approved by the EU yesterday; something we should celebrate. The road to this decision involved many years of intense analysis and negotiations and it will still take a further decade to culminate. It is the EU style of development and institution- building. It is a detailed and intricate, sometimes tortuous, system, but once it is completed, there will be no way back. Some people accuse the system of being too bureaucratic, but in fact in the long run it works better than other systems of multilateral integration. The same will happen with Bologna. The first stages now are centered on harmonizing the different exisiting systems in Europe, establishing procedural norms and quality-assement frameworks. Once this stage is completed, the players will progressively confront more complicated issues, leaving for dessert the crucial matter of financing.
Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
After participating in a panel discussion earlier this year on how the German business programs might respond to the Bologna Accord (see “Roundtable on future of business education in Germany” in this blog), I came away with the impression that the process would lead to a standard structure option for the first two degrees in business at most universities. I think that this opportunity for structural consistency has many advantages and should be supported.
I also came away with two major concerns: potentially rigid accreditation standards and a lack of response to market demands.
I often consult with new business schools around the world and usually suggest that they consider being innovative and adapting to local needs in the design of their curriculum. Some international accreditation bodies have adopted a “missions based” approach that emphasizes being consistent with a school’s own goals, as opposed to filling pre-established criteria. Thus, a school could be accredited as readily with very a unique curricula approach as with one lifted from a long-established school. Accreditation processes in all parts of the world should evolve in the direction of flexibility and away from rigidity.
Some very successful European business schools certainly understand this and are quite responsive to the needs of industry in the graduates they hire. On the other hand, some members of the Roundtable were concerned that the Bologna process smacks too much of a “push down” from government and less of a “bubbling up” from the markets. A guiding principle for professional schools should be that students need to be prepared for professional life and responsiveness to employers is very important.
Of course our academic programs, while affected by structure, accreditation standards and the influence of practice, are aimed at giving high quality educational experiences. Quality of this sort depends on, among other factors, student qualifications, faculty expertise in research and teaching, curricula relevance and innovations, adequacy of facilities and underlying all of these, overall funding. The Bologna process, as important as it is, does not directly address the fundamental issues of adequate funding of business education, assuring access to all who need it and the shortage of qualified professors.
Santiago Iñiguez, Decano del Instituto de Empresa Business School.
La implantación del Acuerdo de Bolonia requiere liderazgo político y determinación. El estilo de liderazgo que se precisa para conducir iniciativas multilaterales como ésta tiene un buen exponente en Jean Monnet (1888-1979), considerado como uno de los “padres” de la Unión Europea (UE). Es un estilo de liderazgo que puede inspirar otros proyectos multinacionales donde los intereses de muchas partes diversas, cada una con su propia agenda, deben conjugarse con el objetivo de alcanzar una situación en la que todos ganan (win-win).
Mark Leonard, Director de polticas Internacionales en el Centre for European Reform de Londres, se refiere a Jean Monnet, en su libro “Por qué Europa liderará el siglo XXI”, como el modelo de liderazgo a imitar en instituciones multinacionales. Monnet tenía un perfil muy diferente al de héroes de guerra tales como Churchill o De Gaulle, y se ajustaría más bien al talante funcionarial, debido a su proyección poco destacada en público. Era inteligente, gran impulsor del trabajo en equipo, trabajador infatigable y promotor de acuerdos consensuados. Con su particular estilo de liderazgo, desempeñó un papel decisivo en la construcción europea. La gran visión de Monnet fue entender que una comunidad de naciones diversa y con intereses concurrentes y simultáneamente divergentes, no podía construirse de una vez, de acuerdo con un plan general, sino a través de realizaciones concretas que crearan una solidaridad de hecho entre los miembros. Su visión consistía, paradójicamente, en evitar adoptar una gran visión. El pragmatismo y la idea del cambio gradual y progresivo fueron decisivos para el éxito del proyecto, abordando sucesivamente etapas que iban completando nuevas esferas de integración y cooperación, hasta llegar al fenómeno único de la Unión Europea actual.
Necesitamos un enfoque similar y un estilo parecido de liderazgo para la implantación del Acuerdo de Bolonia. La iniciativa de desarrollo está delegada a los países miembros y a la participación de un amplio grupo de “stakeholders”: representantes de las universidades, agencias de calidad y acreditación, profesores, estudiantes, empleadores y la administración pública, entre otros. Dada la necesidad de encontrar nuevos “Monnets” para orquestar la implantación de Bolonia, aproveché la ocasión de una reciente visita de Klaus Schwab al Instituto de Empresa (IE) para sugerirle que en la próxima cumbre de Davos debería organizar una sesión dedicada a discutir sobre Bolonia.
(Klaus Schwab (izquierda), Presidente de Davos World Economic Forum, hablando con Diego Alcázar (derecho), Presidente del IE)
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Vice-Chairman General Motors
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