education for intercultural dialogue and understanding bernd wächter, director, aca the ehea in a...
TRANSCRIPT
Education for Intercultural Dialogue and Understanding
Bernd Wächter, Director, ACA
THE EHEA in a Global Context
• The Bologna Declaration: a big surprise at the time
• Pre-Bologna: the mantra of ‘diversity’ (the more heterogeneous, the better)
• National government as the guardians ‘diversity’
• Bologna Declaration: national government demanding European harmonisation
• Why this change of mind and direction? The discovery of a global higher education market.
Global roots of the EHEA
Bologna 1999-2005: external dimension low-key
• Astonishing: the first years of the EHEA (Bologna) concentrated on the ‘internal agenda’
• An explicit ‘external dimension’ not deemed a necessity before 2005 (Bergen Ministerial Meeting)
• Up to Bergen: remarks about ‘Bologna and the wider world’ unsystematic and scattered
• Ambivalence between a competitive and a cooperative ‘external Bologna’
• Paradoxically: high ‘visibility’ of the EHEA without external strategy
The Bergen Communiqué
• Ministers in Bergen demanded
– development of an ‘external strategy of the EHEA’
– status report on interaction between EHEA and HE elsewhere in the world (Zgaga report)
– organisation of three ‘official Bologna seminars’ on the external theme
– creation of a working group to organise the above
The status report (Pavel Zgaga)
• Focus on ‘echos’ from around the world
• Tendency: high visibility and appreciation (paradoxical, since much of Bologna is import)
• Partly: the EHEA as a ‘role model’ around the world
• Eagerness of non-European countries to join the Bologna Process
The Strategy
Identification of 5 “key policy areas”, i.e.
– Correct and easily understandable information– Promotion and marketing of European (EHEA)
higher education– Cooperation based on partnerships– Policy dialogue – Recognition of qualifications
Overall: balanced mix between ‘competitive’, cooperative’
And ‘technical’ agenda.
Remaining business
• to concretise the strategy by means of practical action
• to define means of participation of non-EHEA countries (HEIs) in the Bologna Process
• Overall: to integrate the ‘external dimension’ into ‘Bologna 2020’
To finish off…
Thank you for your kind attention.