Gallic Villages in the Bologna Area Reasons and Strategies for Resisting the Bologna Reform in Selected Fields of Study

Author(s):

Heinke Roebken(presenting / submitting)Marcel Schütz

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 05 E, Governance in Higher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-24

13:30-15:00

Room:

NM-J102

Chair:

Katja Brøgger

Contribution

Since the implementation of the Bologna model in 1999, the vast majority of German higher education institutions has introduced the two-tier system leading to the bachelor and master degree. The old structure with diploma degrees, state examination and magister degrees has almost completely disappeared over the last 15 years. The rapid adoption of the Bologna model in European higher education has been analyzed by a variety of authors (e.g. Schriewer 2007, Krücken 2005, Schriewer 2009, Kühl 2012, Lenzen 2014). Although it seems that the Bologna model is nowadays an unquestionable fact, there are some case examples, where this “new European myth” (Schriewer 2007) has been resisted. A small group of departments explicitly rejected reforming their study programs according to the new Bologna system and decided to maintain the old diploma and magister programs. One example is the University of Dresden, which kept the “German Diplom Ingenieur” that is widely considered as brand label in international academic engineering education (Odenbach/Krauthäuser 2015). There are also other university departments in Germany that decided not to conform to the Bologna requirements. It can be assumed that these departments face severe legitimation and adaptation pressures given the fact that politicians and many higher education actors have vigorously enforced the adoption of the Bologna system. Against this background it is interesting to investigate the departments resisting the reform in more detail. The purpose of this study is to explore the backgrounds, motivations and strategies in resisting a powerful “rationalized myth” in the European higher education area.

Method

In order to explore the reasons and action strategies for resisting the implementation of the new degrees, we conducted a qualitative study utilizing semi-structured interviews. A qualitative research design is particularly fruitful when the concepts of interest have not been fully identified, are poorly understood, or underdeveloped. Since the reasons for resisting institutionalized practices have only been studied rudimentarily in the literature, the exploratory qualitative approach is appropriate because it allows us to elaborate new concepts and theory grounded on a number of in-depth interviews. Additionally, the qualitative approach to collecting data enables the researcher to gather rich accounts of participant’s interpretation of their environment, which is an important element of institutionalization processes, respectively the resistance to institutionalization. Twenty departments at German higher education institutions were contacted; out of these, 6 professors were willing to take part in this study. The selected professors were asked to participate in personal, semi-structured interviews. An overview of discussion topics was sent to each interviewee prior to the interview. In total, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 professors. The researchers fully transcribed all of the interviews carried out, which enabled unnoticed information to be detected at a later stage. The interview material was analyzed using an inductive approach to data analysis. The interviews were read in full, and memos were written. The two authors read the interviews independently. On a subset of interviews, we performed line-by-line coding, and the emerging codes were compared, discussed and revised. After that, we derived a number of key analytic constructs, including (1) reactions to the reform, (2) relevant actors (ministries, university leadership, recruiters, students), (3) micro-politics, (4), decoupling. Using this broad category system, the researchers coded all transcripts using MaxQDA. After all data was coded, we utilized several techniques to ensure that our categorization was trustworthy

Expected Outcomes

In this section, we present our research findings, first as a brief description of the selected cases and secondly in terms of the reactions to the Bologna reform as well as relevant actors in the environment of the reform resistant department. In addition, we describe several micro-political processes that emerged as influencing the decision to keep the old degree structure. Finally, we consider some arguments on the observed decoupling strategies.

References

Krücken, Georg/Meyer, Frank (2005): Der gesellschaftliche Innovationsdiskurs und die Rolle von Universitäten. Eine Analyse gegenwärtiger Mythen, in: Die Hochschule, Vol. 14: 157-170. Kühl, Stefan (2012): Der Sudoku-Effekt. Hochschulen im Teufelskreis der Bürokratie. Eine Streitschrift. Bielefeld. Lenzen, Dieter (2014): Bildung statt Bologna, Berlin: Ullstein Odenbach, Stefan/Krauthäuser, Hans-Georg (2015): Mehr als ein akademischer Grad. Plädoyer für das Diplom in den Ingenieurwissenschaften, download unter: https://www.academics.de/wissenschaft/mehr_als_ein_akademischer_grad_plaedoyer_fuer_das_diplom_in_den_ingenieurwissenschaften_57884.html, 25.10.2015 Schriewer, Jürgen. "Bologna" - ein neu-europäischer "Mythos"? Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, Vol. 53, No. 2: 182-199 Schriewer , Jürgen (2009): rationalized myths in European Higher Education, in: European Education, Vol. 41, No. 2: 31-51

Author Information

Heinke Roebken (presenting / submitting)

University of Oldenburg

Oldenburg

Marcel Schütz

University of Oldenburg, Germany

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