How the Bologna Process expanded opportunities for students across Europe

Sara Penge studied political science at more than one European university— and her degrees carry the same recognition all over the EU.

“Here in Europe, my degree in Italy is the same as the one in France,” she said.

Twenty-nine-year-old Penge, speaking from the campus of the Cité Internationale Universitaire in Paris, said that she believes this flexibility helped her land her current job as a marketing manager in Paris. And it’s something she said she wishes her American friends could also benefit from.

“[Americans] are not as lucky as us Europeans,” she said with a shrug.

In Europe, students move easily between countries, crossing borders, to find the best university for their needs. They are subject to the same standards and pay the same tuition as local students. There is no out-of-state tuition and no paying triple for being from another country.

This is possible because of the Bologna Process, passed in 1999, which unites university degrees across Europe under a common set of quality assurance controls and recognition standards. 

So, a chemistry degree obtained in Portugal, for example, would be equally recognized in the United Kingdom.

Bringing together thousands of university degree programs across dozens of countries and dozens of languages under one system could amount to a bureaucratic nightmare. But a handful of people were ready to take on the challenge.

“It began with a meeting in Paris, in 1998, between the then-French minister of education, me and the Italian and German ministers,” said Tessa Blackstone, Britain’s former education minister.

A ‘game-changer’

Kathy Isaacs, who was born in the US, has spent nearly 60 years working to improve higher education across Europe.

Today, she lives in Italy and works with the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). 

She described the Paris meeting of 1998 as a game-changer.

“There was a real brainstorming [among] the four countries that had very different systems,” Isaacs said. “It’s very difficult to be more different than those four countries were.” 

So, the agreement that came out of the meeting was somewhat of a miracle, considering that many of the university systems were hundreds of years old and steeped in their own traditions and standards.

“There is a lot of international trade, if you like, in higher education with students studying abroad,” Blackstone said. “It made much more sense within Europe to have a common system that students, and individual universities in different countries, could all understand and sign up for.”

The agreement was initially called the Sorbonne Declaration.

A year later, that declaration was expanded upon with the Bologna Process, and was signed by 31 countries, most of which were EU members.

Today, there are 49 nations that have signed onto the agreement, including countries such as Azerbaijan and Ukraine.

Together, they share a common credit system, degree cycles and benchmark goals for individual courses. There are also regular quality control checks that are regulated by the EHEA.

Isaacs said that connecting the US and European systems is something that’s long been on her radar, and has been part of her lifelong goal to foster crosscultural connections.

“My father, as a young oceanographer, was involved in and took the photos of the explosion of the atomic bomb at Bikini [Atoll],” she said — the place in the Marshall Islands that the US used as a nuclear testing site.

This was in 1946, when Isaacs was only 3 years old. And her father sent her a letter with some advice: “Do something with your life that brings people together.”

Looking back, Isaacs said that the letter inspired her.

“I think of higher education as being a way that these things can possibly happen,” she explained. “That is, by coming into contact with other people, other ways of thinking, other ways of speaking, other ways of evaluating things, that it can bring to, at least one hopes, to better understanding.”

Isaacs added that she hopes initiatives like the Bologna Process can help students carry the lessons that come with crosscultural connection with them throughout their lives.

Related: Is the US still the No. 1 education destination?