The Bologna Process II

Here's Inside Higher Ed's take on the move by three states that's reported in the immediately preceding post. Some quotes:

In a major new effort to assure rigor and relevance for college degrees at various levels, three states are today formally launching a project aimed at “tuning” academic programs in six fields of study.

“Tuning,” borrowed from Europe’s Bologna Process, involves research and surveys of faculty members, students and employers, and consultation with business and government leaders, to determine exactly what a degree in a given field stands for in terms of students’ learning and competencies. Europe embarked on tuning as part of an effort to make degrees across the continent interchangeable, so that a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in Italy would mean roughly the same as one in the Netherlands, and that graduate programs and employers could thus know what a given degree would represent.

In the United States, the three states starting such efforts today are Indiana (in education, history and chemistry), Utah (in history and physics), and Minnesota (in graphic design and chemistry). The effort is being led by the Lumina Foundation for Education.

A general theme of the effort is that degrees will have more meaning if there is a consensus about what they mean, and if that consensus is based on learning objectives and skills, not credits earned or courses completed.

An earlier Inside Higher Ed article about the Bologna Process.