Higher education in Europe has been shaped by the aim of establishing the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by the year 2010. This endeavour, known as the Bologna Process, has several goals, the most important ones being adoption of a system of easily readable and comparable HE degrees based on three main cycles, establishment of a system of credits, promotion of student and teacher mobility, and the implementation of quality assurance systems. The Bologna Process has had various consequences to higher education systems and cultures of the signatory countries. The latest report by the Bologna follow-up group (2007) tells that the process has progressed well since the Ministerial meeting in Bergen in 2005. However, the report points out that more emphasis should be put on “learning outcomes as a basis for […] national qualifications frameworks, systems for credit transfer and accumulation, the diploma supplement, recognition of prior learning and quality assurance”. And further, ”this is a precondition for achieving many of the goals of the Bologna Process by 2010” (p. 3). Hence, the report suggests that the development of qualifications frameworks based on learning outcomes and linking these to other Bologna action lines (quality assurance, lifelong learning, social dimension etc.) will be a top priority in the near future. Several studies (e.g. Hoffman, Välimaa & Huusko, 2008; Neave & Amaral, 2008; Veiga & Amaral, 2009) have, however, pointed out that while the Bologna Process may have progressed well at the system level, it has not done so at the institutional and basic unit levels. Neave and Amaral (2008) end up arguing that the basic strategy behind the Bologna Process needs to be reconsidered with more focus on how far the different systems of higher education engaged in the Bologna Process are able to absorb this new commitment. The main objective of the symposium is to explore what impacts the Bologna Process has had on national higher education systems, institutions and/or basic units (academic departments, faculties). In other words, how the upper-level policy goals described in the first section are interpreted by higher education institutions and units. The symposium also analyses how the Bologna Process is understood in different cultural contexts. The presentations in the symposium will focus on various aspects of the Bologna Process: curriculum reform and joint degrees, quality assurance, national qualifications frameworks, the social dimension of European higher education as well as the challenges of the harmonization process.

The eight papers that form the essence of the symposium have various methodological orientations. The data addressed in these papers includes documents (like policy documents, curricula of study programmes), statistics and interviews. Typical designs involve a case-study approach and primarily qualitative analyses (such as content analysis). Some of the papers are ‘Zeitdiagnoses’ of the impacts of the Bologna Process in a given country. These papers (critically) analyse the role of the policy intents for the convergence of European higher education.

The papers of the symposium include experiences of the Bologna Process from nine countries (England, Estonia, France, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden). The symposium brings together insights from various contexts on what kinds of impacts the Bologna Process has had at national and institutional levels, and thus promotes a comparative perspective of the establishment of the EHEA. Furthermore, the symposium helps to understand the role of nation states as well as institutional cultures and characteristics in the implementation of the pan-European goals of the Bologna Process. The symposium will view the Bologna Process critically as well: Whose benefits is this development set up for, and what are its actual contributions to “European higher education”?