Background & progress of Bologna Process

From the April 18 edition of University World News:

The Hungarian and Austrian Ministers for Science and Research, Education and Culture who were responsible for the 2010 Bologna ministerial meeting have released a magazine summing up the Bologna achievements and capturing many of its dimensions.

Together with the Spanish Minister of Education, now chairing the Bologna process in the capacity of holding the Presidency of the European Union, the ministers' release captures the many dimensions in the Bologna process.

The magazine is a much needed simplification of what the Bologna process is about: most notably greater accountability of degrees and study periods among European nations as a pre-condition for increased mobility during and after graduation.

.... The consensus is that the Bologna process has released new energy and a new spirit of collaboration and new goals for European higher education institutions.

Some say the Bologna process is the major impulse for university reforms ever, as expressed by E Stephen Hunt at the US Department of Education:

"The Bologna process is almost certainly the most important multinational reform of higher education undertaken since the teaching guilds and the student nations established the revolutionary concepts of the studium generale and universities in the 11th and 12th centuries," Hunt writes.

And now, for the rest of the story...