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.