Universities in Europe and the Bologna process
economist.com
economist.com
The restructuring caused some chaos, quite a few problems and for many Professors to be unhappy. Universities are still reluctant to give one credit for things done somewhere else. Many universities offer increasingly specialized study courses. So what became supposedly easily possible for the first time due to the Bologna process (I’m talking about Germany here) – switching universities after the Bachelor (didn’t exist before in any way, shape or form in Germany) – became at the same time very difficult because nobody offers (exactly) the same.
Much of this is Professors fretting about additional work – they have to talk to all those strange Bachelor people and actually negotiate about what they are going to give them credit for (“Oh come on, your seminar on medieval literature doesn’t count as fulfilling your modern literature requirement!“).
I’m quite happy until now (first generation “Bologna”, now in the fourth semester), but the Bachelor’s degree seems pretty useless here in Germany. I’m not sure if anyone would hire someone with a Bachelor’s degree in Germany at the moment – we didn’t have anything like that before, companies are not exactly sure what having a Bachelor’s degree means. And my university seems even to think that it is necessary to write "Equivalent of the (old) diploma" on their Master’s degree.
Was the Bologna process useful? – Hm, I’m really not sure right now. Ask me in five years.
In the old model there were four degrees: Bachelor (3 years), Licenciado (5 years), Master (6+ years) and Doctorate. Now we have Licenciado (3 years), Master (5 years) and Doctorate (6+ years). This means "Licenciados" and "Masters" from the old model must disambiguate by adding "(n years)" as not to be confused with the new (shorter) versions. Madness.
Companies are eager to hire bachelors, which will do the job they want them to do exactly the same as a Master, but with the difference of paying them only a fraction.