Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Oxford, UKEJEDEuropean Journal of Education0141-8211Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2006June 2006412••••Original ArticlesEuropean Journal of EducationRuth Keeling

European Journal of Education, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2006

The Bologna Process and the Lisbon Research

Agenda: the European Commission’s expanding role
in higher education discourse

RUTH KEELING

Introduction
Higher education continues to be acknowledged as one of the primary policy
responsibilities of European nation-states. However, national higher education
arrangements are increasingly affected by international pressures, and the higher
education sector in Europe is at present significantly influenced by two European-
level policy developments: firstly, the higher education reforms initiated by the
Bologna Process, and, secondly, the research aspects of the European Union’s
Lisbon Strategy for jobs and growth. Neither the Bologna Process nor the Lisbon
Strategy constitutes a comprehensive basis for EU action in higher education. The
Bologna Process is an intergovernmental commitment to restructuring higher
education systems which extends far beyond the EU and the Lisbon Strategy is
part of the Union’s wider economic platform that extends beyond the higher
education sector. In combination, however, these European-level actions are
supporting and stabilising an emergent policy framework for the EU in higher
education.
The European objectives for higher education emerging through the Bologna
and Lisbon Processes have significantly broadened the European Commission’s
basis for involvement. Furthermore, these developments have confirmed the
increasingly central role of the Commission’s policy texts in shaping higher edu-
cation discourse in Europe. The Commission’s dynamic association of the Bologna
university reforms with its Lisbon research agenda and its successful appropriation
of these as European-level issues have placed its perspectives firmly at the heart
of higher education policy debates in Europe. The following article explores the
process by which the Commission has begun to dominate higher education dis-
course in Europe and the implications of this for the sector.

The Development of EU Higher Education Policy

During 2005, the European Commission’s educational initiatives regularly made
headline news. To begin with, its proposal to establish a European Research
Funding Council met with widespread public approval from several high-profile
university alliances (LERU, 2005; Glasgow Declaration, 2005; EUA, 2005b).1 In
May 2005, the Bergen ministerial conference of the Bologna Process confirmed
the pivotal role of the Commission in supporting the reforms of degree structures,
credit transfer, quality assurance and curricular development, which are trans-

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UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
204 European Journal of Education

forming the ‘European Higher Education Area’. In June, Commission President

Barroso announced the possible launch by the EU of a new higher educational
institution, the European Institute of Technology (European Commission, 2005a;
European Commission, 2005j). And in October, the Commission announced
proudly that almost 90%2 of European universities are now formally integrated
into its ERASMUS mobility, cooperation and thematic networks (European Com-
mission, 2005l). Given the large-scale impact of the Commission’s activities in the
European higher education landscape, it is easy to forget that higher education is
still not clearly an EU competency. The field of education is notable by its absence
in the EU’s founding Treaties. Primary responsibility for higher education remains
expressly reserved to the EU Member States in the Treaty on European Union
and the draft Constitutional Treaty.3 The European Commission’s Directorate-
General for Education and Culture has a limited legal basis and relatively small
financial resources for its ‘supplementary’ activities in higher education.
The European Commission has nonetheless steadily increased its involvement
in higher education issues over the past 50 years.4 At first, the EU’s few educational
activities were promoted under the banner of vocational training and the recogni-
tion of professional qualifications. These initiatives were justified as being essential
to securing the free movement of workers and thus the proper functioning of the
Internal Market. Following the European Court of Justice decision, Gravier,
however, the concept of ‘vocational training’ was expanded to incorporate most
university-level study (ECJ, 1985). The influential ERASMUS mobility pro-
gramme, launched in 1987, dramatically intensified the Commission’s involve-
ment in European higher education, particularly in the areas of credit transfer and
university networking. EU-funded ‘ERASMUS’ scholarships have now supported
1.4 million Europeans to spend a period of their studies in another European
country (European Commission, 2005l).
The extension of the EU’s higher education activities was cautiously acknowl-
edged in the Treaty of Maastricht, which nonetheless carefully delimited the EU’s
sphere of action to supporting Member States to encourage international mobility
and the ‘European dimension’.5 However, this new mandate allowed the Com-
mission to develop a wider range of inter-university cooperation programmes
under the SOCRATES framework.6 The EU’s programmes in higher education
today address a range of objectives from language support (LINGUA), distance
and e-learning (MINERVA), adult education (GRUNDTVIG), to external rela-
tions with non-EU ‘third countries’ through programmes such as TEMPUS and
Asia-Link.7 A comprehensive new ‘Integrated Programme’ incorporating most of
the EU’s existing education programmes and initiatives has been proposed for the
period 2007–13 (European Commission, 2004a).
In 2002, the EU’s educational activities gained in prominence when national
Ministers responsible for education endorsed the first European-level ‘Work Pro-
gramme for Education and Training 2010’ (European Council, 2002b). This ten-
year plan for modernising education systems in EU Member States confirmed the
three overarching objectives adopted jointly by the national education ministers
the previous year — improving quality and effectiveness; facilitating access; and
opening up national education and training systems to the world (Education
Council, 2001). The Commission’s programmes could now be justified as con-
tributing to these strategic goals set by Member States for their education systems,
allowing the Commission to adopt a more systematic approach to its expanding

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 Ruth Keeling 205

repertoire of programmes. Member States nonetheless continued to guard their

responsibilities for higher education carefully. The specific European benchmarks
set in tandem with the Work Programme 2010 provided few concrete common
goals for the university sector (European Commission, 2002c). Such legal and
political limits continue to prevent the Commission from taking a more direct
approach to higher education and universities.
Over the past five years, however, the European Commission has extended its
involvement in the higher education sector by two additional routes: firstly,
through its research policy — as an aspect of the EU’s Lisbon Strategy for growth
and jobs — and, secondly, by supporting institutional and structural reform of the
tertiary education sector under the intergovernmental umbrella of the Bologna
Process. These two broad policy ‘Processes’ have provided new opportunities for
the Commission to assert — and insert — itself in the higher education policy
arena. Through financing a range of research initiatives and Bologna reform
projects, it has become directly involved with numerous ‘grass-roots’ activities —
practical intervention which has done much to increase the EU’s visibility and
significance for universities. Furthermore, the formal definition of European-level
objectives for universities within the Lisbon Strategy and the Bologna Process has
complemented — and significantly bolstered — the goal-setting for the education
sector outlined in the EU Member States’ joint Work Programme 2010. This has
opened new opportunities for Commission policy activism in higher education.

The Lisbon Process and European Research

Research features in the Commission’s policy agenda through the EU Lisbon
Strategy for economic growth and employment. The EU Heads of State and
Government, meeting in Lisbon for the Union’s Spring Council of 2000, pledged
to work towards making the EU the most ‘dynamic knowledge-based economy in
the world’ by 2010 (European Council, 2000).8 This ambitious policy objective
stimulated the European Council in Barcelona in 2002 to commit the EU to the
goal of raising overall expenditure on research and development to 3% of GDP
by 2010 (European Council, 2002a). With explicit reference to the Lisbon objec-
tives, the Commission released first a Communication (European Commission,
2002a) and then an Action Plan, ‘Investing in Research’ (European Commission,
2003b). These strategy documents recognised higher education institutions among
the ‘key stakeholders’ in European research: according to the Commission, Euro-
pean universities employ one-third of European researchers and produce 80% of
fundamental research in Europe (European Commission, 2005f). In its Action
Plan, the Commission stressed the need for coherence in research policies, for
increasing public support and resources for research and for improving the frame-
work conditions for research and development in Europe in order to contribute
to the Lisbon goals.
The ‘grand plan’ of the Lisbon Strategy was to be pursued cooperatively
through the ‘Open Method of Coordination’, according to benchmarks and indi-
cators monitored by the Commission. By 2005, however, it was clear that progress
at the national level towards achieving the Lisbon objectives had been slow in a
number of policy areas. For example, in the education sector, only one of the five
educational benchmarks set by the Work Programme 2010, designed in response
to the Lisbon call, was on track to be achieved by the target deadline (European

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206 European Journal of Education

Commission and Council, 2004). Achieving the 3% of GDP funding goal for
research also seemed highly improbable.
The Commission’s damning mid-term review in 2005 (‘A New Start for the
Lisbon Strategy’) announced that the Lisbon Agenda would be redefined to focus
primarily on two main goals: growth and jobs (European Commission, 2005a).
The critical role of the higher education sector in achieving the desired outcome
was highlighted. Although the broader social and ecological objectives of the
original Lisbon commitment were relegated to a back seat in the new Lisbon
‘Integrated Guidelines’9, the Work Programme 2010 objectives for education were
retained in parallel. Thus, the higher education sector remains implicated through
several different policy channels in the implementation of the streamlined Lisbon
agenda. For many universities, however, the Commission’s targeted financial
support for research under its ‘Framework Programmes’ is more significant in
practice than the broad educational objectives of the Work Programme 2010.
Lisbon — and, paradoxically, its lack of progress — has strongly confirmed
the Commission’s mandate for further action relating to research. In 2005, the
Commission presented a bold plan to double funds available for research at the
European level under the 7th Research Framework Programme (European Com-
mission, 2005e). Once launched, European universities and research institutes will
be eligible for funding under each of its four headings: for cooperation initiatives
(in nine priority areas), project-based research (through the European Research
Council), researcher support (through the Marie Curie scheme) and for improving
research infrastructure. The funding opportunities available through the Commis-
sion’s research initiatives have generated considerable interest throughout the
European university sector (see, for example, EUA 2005a), enhancing the popular
legitimacy of the Commission’s actions in this area.
The growing significance of the research elements of the Lisbon Strategy has
provided the Commission with a critical opening to advocate substantial reform
of institutional and research management in Europe’s universities. This began in
2003 with the key Communication ‘The Role of the Universities in the Europe of
Knowledge’ (European Commission, 2003a), followed in 2005 by ‘Mobilising the
Brainpower of Europe’ (European Commission, 2005b). Calling for a new social
contract between the higher education sector and society, the Commission made
recommendations concerning institutional governance, financing arrangements
and curricular reform, whilst emphasising the need to guarantee universities’
operational autonomy and to stabilise their core funding. The 2005 Communica-
tion and its accompanying Commission Staff Working Paper (European Commis-
sion, 2005c) were exceptional in prescribing detailed measures for university
reform, including performance-linked pay for academics, tax incentives for uni-
versity-industry cooperation, and output-related funding for higher education
institutions. The Commission explicitly derived its mandate for issuing such
detailed recommendations for university reform from the Lisbon goals for Euro-
pean research, while also referencing the complementary Work Programme in
education and training.

The Bologna Process and Higher Education Reform

At the same time, European higher education systems are undergoing radical
restructuring in line with objectives defined by the Bologna Process. Like the

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 Ruth Keeling 207

Lisbon Strategy, the Bologna Process is based on an intergovernmental agree-

ment, but its extended membership places it clearly outside the EU’s formal
policy-making processes. It began in 1999 as a commitment by 29 European
governments to pursue complementary higher education reforms in order to
establish a ‘European Higher Education Area’ of compatible national systems
(Bologna Declaration 1999). Seven years later, the Process now involves 45
European countries (and the European Commission) as full members, along with
a number of representative organisations operating at the European level, includ-
ing representatives of students (ESIB), higher education institutions (EUA and
EURASHE), quality assurance agencies (ENQA), employers (UNICE) and the
academic trade unions (Education International). The reform agenda is imple-
mented in a decentralised way at the national level, but it is closely monitored and
advanced by European-level reports, conferences, communiqués and policy
declarations, which are all structured around a series of biennial ministerial
meetings.10
Under the banner of the Bologna Process, various national reforms have begun
to make university qualifications more easily comparable across Europe. The
Bologna Process is best known for promoting the introduction of the three-cycle
degree structure to European higher education systems. A three-tiered progression
of Bachelor’s, Master’s, and doctoral degrees has quickly become the European
standard in participating countries.11 Furthermore, intergovernmental agreement
within the Bologna Process has determined that these national higher education
qualifications are now to be organised into an overarching European-wide frame-
work (BOLOGNA WORKING GROUP, 2005a). Within this basic framework,
and in line with complementary Lifelong Learning initiatives in many countries,
qualifications will be defined according to levels of complexity and difficulty.
Generic descriptors of the requisite learning outcomes at each level are being
defined by expert working groups, which are intended to be broadly applicable in
all national contexts.12 The Bologna Process also encourages the use of study
credits, which can be accumulated and transferred by students as they move
between institutions, between countries and across different forms of study. As it
develops, more detailed subject-specific guidelines are also being designed and
adopted throughout Europe.13
In addition, the Bologna Process has encouraged manifold developments in
the area of quality assurance — both within higher education institutions and
externally. Since 2003, common standards have been developed for quality assur-
ance processes (ENQA, 2005) and a European network of quality assurance
agencies (ENQA) has been established. An associated strand of activity within the
Bologna reforms has involved measures to improve the attractiveness and profile
of European higher education. This so-called ‘external dimension’ was the subject
of a number of conferences and publications in the lead-up to the ministerial
conference at Bergen in May 2005 (e.g. Muche 2005).
At the ministerial meeting in Bergen, it was acknowledged that ‘Bologna’
overall has demonstrated remarkable success. The country ‘scorecards’ produced
by the Bologna Follow-up Group showed good progress in the implementation of
the required reforms throughout the emerging European Higher Education Area
(BOLOGNA WORKING GROUP, 2005b; Reichert & Tauch, 2005). Compre-
hensive stocktaking by the European University Association, the student unions
and many other groups has demonstrated that Bologna has initiated profound

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changes in the higher education systems of dozens of countries, despite lingering

concerns about the speed and quality of the translation of the Bologna goals at
the university grass-roots (Reichert & Tauch, 2005; ESIB, 2005). Over the past
five years, therefore, the Bologna Process has had a decisive impact on almost all
aspects of higher education in Europe.
Although national governments and higher education institutions are them-
selves leading the way in shaping and implementing the Bologna reforms, the
European Commission has played an active role from the beginning. Formally, it
is the only ‘non-state’ member of the Process, and it is also an influential member
of the Bologna Follow-up Group which drives developments at the European level
between the ministerial reviews every two years. Many of the Bologna initiatives
are ‘mainstreaming’ solutions first developed by the Commission to enhance the
international mobility of European students and their qualifications. For example,
the EU’s credit transfer and accumulation system (known as ECTS), first piloted
within Erasmus networks, has become the European standard. The Commission
also provides financial incentives for higher education cooperation and reform
projects in line with the Bologna objectives (European Commission, 2005h), as
well as funding national Bologna Promoters and Bologna information activities
(European Commission, 2005g).
The Commission has also aligned its own activities with the Bologna reforms.
In 2003, it adopted the complementary goals of enhancing transparency, recog-
nition, credit transfer and quality assurance in its Staff Working Document on the
implementation of the EU’s Work Programme 2010 (European Commission,
2003e). It has actively developed the quality assurance strand of the Bologna
Process on behalf of its Member States, most recently through the adoption of its
proposal for a European register of recognised Quality Assurance Agencies by the
EU Parliament and Council late in 2005 (European Commission, 2004b). The
Commission has further promoted joint degrees and the Bachelor/Master struc-
ture through its newly-launched Erasmus Mundus Masters programme and other
pilot studies.14 Critically, it has ensured that encouraging ‘synergies’ between
the European Higher Education Area and the EU’s European Research Area
is recognised as a key Bologna priority (Berlin Communiqué, 2003; Bergen
Communiqué, 2005).

The European Commission: shaping the discourse?

Through the Lisbon and Bologna Processes, along with the complementary devel-
opment of its portfolio of higher education activities, the Commission has rapidly
achieved a strong profile in the European higher education sector. From funding
the ministerial meetings of the intergovernmental Bologna Process to its political
backing of the nascent European Research Council, the European Commission
has become an indispensable player in higher education in Europe. Furthermore,
expanding the range of its educational activities to support European research and
the Bologna Process has allowed the Commission’s emerging vision for higher
education in Europe to develop greater political weight with increased impact on
a wider scale.
The Lisbon-based research agenda and the Bologna Process have assisted the
Commission to disseminate an influential European discourse of higher education.
A richly-elaborated language for discussing higher education issues is circulated

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 Ruth Keeling 209

through the Commission’s Calls for Proposals, its policy documents, and also by
its consistent participation in policy discussions at a European level. As Commis-
sion President Barroso has pointed out revealingly, ‘we’re the only constant in this
project . . . we’re always sitting there’ (Barroso, 2005). The Commission’s multi-
levelled involvement in the ‘language games’ (Mottier, 2005) of research policy
and the Bologna Process have contributed significantly to the development of a
widening pool of ‘common sense’ understandings, roughly coherent lines of argu-
ment and ‘self-evident’ statements of meaning about higher education in Europe.
Through its contributions to the Bologna Process and to the European research
agenda, the Commission propagates a discourse that constructs higher education
as purposeful. A key message embedded in the Bologna objectives and the EU’s
research policy is that higher education leads somewhere — for the individual and
for wider society. This assumption permeates the Commission’s texts on higher
education issues. In the context of the Bologna Process, the Commission consis-
tently depicts learning as an inherently productive activity, through which students
accumulate and generate knowledge for personal and social benefit.15 Knowledge
‘production’16 plays a similarly central role in the EU’s research policy discourse:
according to Commission texts, researchers create ‘innovations’, ‘new technolo-
gies’, ‘knowledge assets’ and ‘intellectual property’. By maintaining that these
research products should be directed towards the benefit of society, the Commis-
sion forges a line of argument which necessitates its own preference for ‘applied’
research. Its documents on Bologna and EU research policy continually reinforce
the idea that higher education (and thus policy activism in this area) produces
useful ‘results’ for the individual and society.
Furthermore, the Commission’s policy documents push the idea that educa-
tional activities and ‘outputs’ are measurable. In its assessments of the Bologna
Process and European research, the Commission measures educational achieve-
ments both at the level of the individual (in terms of ECTS credits and research
output), and also in its comprehensive ‘stocktaking’ procedures which analyse
the ‘performance’ of participating countries (European Commission, 2005n;
BOLOGNA WORKING GROUP, 2005b).17 In line with wider global trends, the
Commission makes constant reference to research assessment exercises, econo-
metric publication citation indices, quantities of triadic patents, and the raw
numbers of European Nobel Prize winners (European Commission, 2005n;
2005j; 2005d). Its identification of ‘indicators’ and its use of ‘benchmarking’, in
relation to both research and higher education reform, break open the formerly
unique status of universities. Higher education institutions are constructed by the
Commission as organisations like any other, participating in and competing on an
open market, and measurable in terms which transcend the education sector.
The Commission also draws on, and combines, the Bologna Process and the
EU’s research agenda in order to represent higher education as economically ben-
eficial for both individuals and society (European Commission, 2005d). It repre-
sents both the Bologna reforms and its research policy initiatives as essential
mechanisms for increasing the employability of university graduates (European
Commission, 2003c). Its policy texts call for higher education activities to be
responsive to the ‘needs’ of the labour market and industry. According to this
discursive logic, higher education results in and corresponds to the ‘up-skilling’
of the workforce. In this depiction, knowledge is produced and then traded.
Education is represented as a product, the researcher as a manufacturer, the

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210 European Journal of Education

student as a consumer, and ECTS credits as the ‘currency of exchange’ (Nyborg,

2005). Furthermore, these lines of reasoning present higher education as a pri-
marily scientific activity (rather than a creative or inspired process). This is most
clearly demonstrated by the increasing attention paid to science, engineering and
technologies (European Commission, 2003a; 2003e; 2005j) and in the Commis-
sion’s demands for institutions and individuals to develop their capacity for stra-
tegic research ‘management’.
Another area common to the Commission’s Bologna discourse and its research
policy documents is that higher education remains driven by the university. The
Commission’s assessment of the continuing relevance of these traditional institu-
tions was made explicit in its Communication ‘The Role of Universities in the
Europe of Knowledge’ (European Commission, 2003a) and is a theme continued
in the Commission’s Communication on ‘University-based Research’ (European
Commission, 2005b). Nonetheless, the Commission consistently depicts higher
education as extending beyond the university. This is articulated through its com-
mitment to lifelong learning (European Commission, 2001; European Commis-
sion, 2004a) and the validation of non-formal learning (European Council, 2004)
and its attempts within the Bologna agenda to facilitate the accreditation of prior
learning through the use of ECTS credits. Complementing this, the Commission’s
research policy also looks beyond the university, advocating breaking down tradi-
tional academic disciplines, supporting ‘transdisciplinarity’, and establishing aca-
demic links with industry and other stakeholders outside the Ivory Tower.
The concept of quality is an important (although ‘floating’) signifier within the
Lisbon research agenda and the Bologna Process. References to ‘quality’ feature
frequently in Commission documents in relation to the Lisbon and Bologna
objectives for higher education, and the notion is clearly integral to the Commis-
sion’s construction of higher education itself. This is unsurprising, given that the
Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam made contributing to ‘quality education’
an EU responsibility,18 and the Barcelona Spring Council determined that the
Commission should assist European education to become a ‘world quality refer-
ence’ (European Council, 2002a). The Commission’s involvement in the quality
assurance strand of Bologna, and its aims for European research, are consequently
directed towards developing a ‘culture of quality’ (European Commission, 2005b),
with a stated preference for supporting students, academics and institutions ‘of
high quality’.19
The research-Bologna nexus encouraged by the Commission also presents
learning and research as a necessarily collaborative activity. Such cooperation is
supported by the Commission through university networks (joint degree pro-
grammes, thematic networks, Joint European Projects20) and collaboration with
industrial partners (Technology Platforms21). Even the process of policy develop-
ment in European higher education is presented in EU policy texts as collabora-
tive, involving contributions from expert groups, public consultations22 and
contributions from key stakeholders — although the Commission remains pivotal
as an organiser and gatekeeper of the debate. International collaboration at all
levels (as opposed to harmonisation or competition) has become, in the Commis-
sion’s view, a defining characteristic of European higher education.
The Commission also draws on the Lisbon objectives for research and on the
Bologna goals to affirm that higher education is inherently international, with
contributions and effects that stretch across national boundaries. The transnational

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 Ruth Keeling 211

dimension celebrated by the Commission is an integral aspect of the wider Bolo-

gna Process, which aims to dismantle obstacles to the free movement of students
and academics. Multinational cooperation is also a fundamental requirement of
the EU’s financial support for research collaboration. Furthermore, the ‘external
dimension’ of European higher education has become a key action line for both
the Bologna Process and the EU’s research agenda. Developments in these areas
support the Commission’s view that higher education constitutes a critical inter-
national platform for relations with, and competition with, the US (European
Commission, 2005f; 2003a; Potodnik, 2005) — and increasingly also with China.
This is commonly expressed as ‘attractiveness’;23 an issue which manifests itself
in the Commission’s heightened concern with international student numbers and
university league tables. This concern with international pre-eminence in higher
education is even more striking in its statements on research policy, particularly
in relation to science and technology.24
The Commission’s presentation of higher education — as purposeful, progres-
sive, successful, economically beneficial, collaborative and international — paral-
lels closely its construction of the wider European project. Higher education is
thus depicted as quintessentially European. The Commission stresses the ‘Euro-
pean dimension’ of the national Bologna reforms, presenting mobility and the
recognition of qualifications as key to accessing the benefits of European citizen-
ship. This is echoed in its attribution of a ‘European status’ for researchers
(European Commission, 2002b, p. 60; 2003d, p. 64) and the planned introduction
of direct funding through a Europe-wide Research Council. The Commission’s
valorisation of these distinctively ‘European’ elements in the EU’s research policy
texts and in the Bologna Process reinforces its position that higher education is a
European-level issue, and that ‘investing more and better in the modernisation
and quality of universities is a direct investment in the future of Europe and Europeans’
(European Commission, 2005b, p. 2, emphasis added).
Interestingly, as the Commission knits together research and Bologna elements
in its policy documents, the wider Bologna reform programme has begun to be
re-articulated in terms of its capacity to support European research. By associating
the two lines of policy development, the Commission has co-opted the Bologna
Process as a necessary mechanism for maximising the socio-economic returns on
EU investment in research. Since the intergovernmental review in Berlin (2003),
the Bologna Process has formally paid greater attention at the European level to
doctoral studies and the training of young researchers.25 The Bergen Communiqué
in 2005 reiterated the need to improve ‘synergies’ between the Bologna higher
education developments and the European Research Area (Bergen Communiqué,
2005, p. 3). The Commission’s docking of research policy with the Bologna
rhetoric has in consequence resulted in a reframing of the higher education
problematic. In its original formulation, the accepted problem to be addressed by
the Bologna reforms was the perceived failure of European education systems to
be responsive to the economy (Bologna Declaration 1999). Inflected through the
Commission’s Lisbon Agenda, the main focus becomes the European economy
itself — drawing higher education reform more firmly within the EU’s policy
domain.26
The European higher education discourse promoted by the European Com-
mission is thus a complex hybrid of research and Bologna elements. Although
deriving from different policy origins, the Bologna reforms and the EU’s research

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212 European Journal of Education

agenda thus mutually reinforce each other — discursively and politically. The
framing of EU research policy as consistent with the Bologna Process enhances
the political legitimacy of the Lisbon objectives in education and research, as
Bologna has become a guiding framework for universities in many countries. The
discursive strategy of referencing the Bologna Process in relation to EU research
also co-opts the powerful Bologna policy network, with its highly developed
cooperation and communication lines, in support of the EU’s rejuvenated research
agenda. Reference to the EU’s research policy in turn provides the Commission’s
Bologna initiatives with enhanced political relevance and a new line of reasoning
for these reforms. The effective blending of these two policy fields has allowed the
hybridised Bologna-research policy discourse employed by the Commission rap-
idly to become a widely-accepted — even hegemonic — perspective for higher
education at the European level.27

The European Commission: dominating the discourse?

The overarching discourse on higher education disseminated through its policy
texts clearly benefits the European Commission. Invoking the Lisbon Strategy and
the Bologna reforms confirms the legitimacy of EU action in higher education,
providing ‘external’ references which justify the Commission’s increased activity
in the tertiary education sector. This has helped to cement its ongoing role in the
Bologna Process, which had been slightly awkward, given that the Process is
formally driven by intergovernmental consensus. Emphasising the ‘research’ ele-
ments within higher education has provided the EU with additional grounds for
involvement. While the Commission’s ability to steer and ‘fast-track’ the Bologna
Process has diminished as its membership expands far beyond the EU-25, the
EU’s research policy texts have strengthened the argument that higher education
necessarily falls within the EU’s field of economic competencies, allowing the
Commission to continue to express a detailed interest in the management, gover-
nance and financing of European universities (European Commission, 2005b). In
turn, however, the Bologna Process continues to provide an important political
mandate for the Commission’s other higher education activities, framing and
justifying the active development of initiatives such as the EU’s Qualifications
Framework, the ECTS grading scale and the European register of quality assur-
ance agencies. In parallel, the expansion of these various activities has initiated a
‘snowballing’ effect which is rapidly enlarging the Commission’s projected role in
future research and Bologna developments.
Drawing on and developing these multiple policy logics has proved a useful
strategy for the European Commission, encouraging the widespread recognition
of higher education as a necessarily European domain. The Commission’s con-
vergence of research policy and the Bologna Process has broadly consolidated the
existence of a European dimension in higher education.28 The insertion of this
logic into a variety of policy documents, reports and funding opportunities has
led to the Commission’s view of the ‘European dimension’ becoming an integral
part of the prevailing common-sense of higher education policy debates in Europe.
As a result, there is growing acceptance on many levels that the concept of ‘Europe’
is fundamental to higher education, and not simply an EU construction — thus
naturalising the Commission’s involvement. Through the Bologna and research
policy frameworks, the Commission has activated a dynamic and attractive con-

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 Ruth Keeling 213

ception of Europe — economically powerful, internationally significant, with a

well-educated, technologically innovative population that is open to working with
the world. This allows higher education to become part of what Cris Shore calls
‘the panoply of cultural devices’ (Shore, 2000, p. xi) deployed by EU policy-
makers to support the European project and address its ‘cultural deficit’ (ibid: 3).29
Obviously, the development of these influential rationalities cannot simply be
read as an EU ‘conspiracy’. The Commission’s higher education discourse has
considerable buy-in and active involvement from the rest of the European higher
education community. While higher education actors continue to dispute — often
stridently — its various proposals, they increasingly adopt the same basic terms.
National governments, for example, have embraced the Commission’s deft com-
bination of research and Bologna priorities, utilising this common language for
higher education to describe and contextualise their national reforms. By discur-
sively referencing the Commission’s broad objectives for higher education,
national governments can articulate additional justifications for their withdrawal
from their traditionally active responsibilities for higher education, moving to
arms-length steering and the provision of incentives, rather than centralised con-
trol.30 Critically, through the EU’s newly-intensified focus on research, the Bolo-
gna commitments adopted by education Ministers can be reframed as relevant to
powerful elites in the national context — leading universities, politicians and the
business technology sector. National governments can also draw on the ‘quality’
argument inherent in the EU’s Bologna and research debates to justify providing
incentives for their ‘national champions’.31
The amalgamation of research and Bologna policy discourses promoted by the
Commission also strengthens the positions of European universities. Higher edu-
cation institutions have embraced and encouraged this widening of the agenda
(Glasgow Declaration 2005, EUA 2005a, p. 2, p. 9), which elevates universities
to a European plane and grants them an influential dual status: as actors and as
the site of action for EU higher education policy. Emphasising their research
functions on the European scale gives universities enhanced importance within
their national spheres and also builds their profile internationally. By shifting the
focus of Bologna reforms to the higher research degrees, higher education insti-
tutions can access new sources of both financial and political support, mobilising
a different constellation of stakeholders, including employers and industry.
Equally, in countries where there has been minimal support for research, combin-
ing EU research priorities with the Bologna reforms can help to introduce research
issues into the national agenda (Bologna Follow-up Conference 2005). Universi-
ties can draw on their successes in implementing the Bologna reforms to present
a new public image as dynamic, outward-looking European institutions, with the
capacity to respond to and engage with criticism and new demands.
Drawing on the parallel discursive strands of Bologna and the EU’s research
agenda, universities are redefining themselves as key and independent players on
the European stage; a social position denied them during years of tight state
control. The ‘EU-approved’ interpretation of European higher education provides
discursive (as well as financial) resources that are allowing many institutions to
reclaim their dignity and sense of purpose following the crisis of confidence in
European higher education.32 In line with this, the Commission’s discursive logic
helpfully suggests that the problem for European universities is the under-
exploitation of research (‘knowledge transfer’ (European Commission, 2005k),

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214 European Journal of Education

and the lack of international recognition (‘readability’) of their qualifications —

rather than in the underlying quality of their educational ‘products’. By adopting
and contributing to this hybridised research-Bologna policy discourse, universities
are able to redefine their missions positively, representing themselves as the
‘powerhouses’ of the new Europe.
Critically, the nexus of the Bologna and EU research policy discourses also
benefits academics. The grafting of research onto the Bologna agenda emphasises
a positive and high-status academic identity. The Bologna reforms, with their main
focus on students, have entailed hard work for the academic community.33 The
rapid transformations in European higher education over the last five years have
necessitated an often painful restructuring of working practices and in many cases
a loss of professional autonomy in both teaching and research. At the same time,
previously tenured or state-supported academics have had to accept changing
employment conditions that often entail a greater dependence on short-term
contracts.34 The research-Bologna policy discourse enables academics to (re-)acti-
vate their newly-prestigious political identity as ‘European researchers’.35 It also
powerfully suggests the inherent ‘quality’ of academic activity. Furthermore, draw-
ing together the Bologna Process and the EU research agenda has also allowed
the structuring of a new, high-status and opportunity-rich space of operation for
academics in Europe — the European Research and Higher Education Areas.
However, it is hard to escape the sense that the Commission’s re-reading of
the Bologna Process in the context of its Lisbon objectives for research primarily
benefits the big players — ‘old’ Member States with established elite universities,
and the existing top research institutions. Competitive funding under the Euro-
pean Research Council and 7th Framework programme will principally benefit
some ‘quality’ institutions and some individuals. A new political logic has been
created concerning the definition of the major stakeholders (and the competitors)
in the challenges facing higher education and the wider European project. The
encouragement by the Commission of the convergence of the Bologna Process
with the priorities of the research agenda has supported a growing stratification
of the higher education sector in the EU. Instead of consolidating across the field,
the European Higher Education Area is in consequence being broken up along
new lines of differentiation.
The dominance of this reading of European higher education leaves limited
space for alternative understandings of higher educational objectives, such as non-
productive research, socialising students ‘to the life of the mind’ (Newman, 2000,
p. 6), personal enrichment and the simple satisfaction of curiosity. With its bifold
emphasis on the ‘learner’36 and the ‘researcher’, the third integral element of higher
education — teaching — also receives little attention or support. The coaching
and mentoring role of professors and lecturers, tutors, instructors and supervisors
is elided by the dominant discourse.37 When combined with the loss of job security,
this refiguring of the priorities in their professional lives has resulted for many
academics in the loss of a sense of vocation (Henkel, 2001).
While drawing together the multiple discursive strands of research and Bologna
does expand the discursive range of European higher education policy, it has
consequently also given a distinctive inflection to higher education discourse that
keeps other perspectives and priorities off the agenda. The setting of educational
policy at the national level is critically restricted, as national priorities are required
to conform, at least notionally, with the European-level objectives. At the institu-

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 Ruth Keeling 215

tional level, the Commission’s proclamation of increasing ‘autonomy’ for univer-

sities disguises how tightly they are increasingly bound into quality assurance
regimes, performance-based funding, and complex inter-institutional cooperation
agreements. Monitoring, reporting, accounting and evaluation mechanisms have
become more onerous (Herbst, 2004), and funding is frequently earmarked for
externally-defined priorities. The resultant centralising of research management in
many institutions is leading to a reduced ability to set priorities at a faculty or
department level (see Herbst, 2004 amongst others). In a retreat from its earlier
programmes in higher education, the Commission’s new-found emphasis on sup-
port for institutions also reduces opportunities for entrepreneurial academics to
operate more independently on a European-scale.
In addition, the priority granted by the Commission to the Bologna Process
and European research potentially closes off other fruitful academic connections,
for example with other parts of the world. EU funding mechanisms, through
initiatives such as Erasmus Mundus or the European Research Council, propagate
strict geographic demarcations between Europe and the ‘Other’. These often-
artificial distinctions encouraged by the EU-level discourse are particularly
frustrating for those European countries with a long history of international
collaboration in higher education, such as Switzerland and the UK.

The European Commission’s Higher Education Discourse: opening space

for discussion?
Overall, it would seem that it is the European Commission itself which is a prime
beneficiary of the higher education discourse it is helping to shape. It has clearly
managed to set the agenda both for the Bologna Process and European research
policy, playing a central role in maintaining the momentum of current political
debate in these areas, and steering their convergence in ways which have affirmed
its own centrality. By drawing together these multiple policy strands, the Com-
mission has confirmed higher education as key sphere of operation for the EU.
However, although it has woven together multiple elements of its Lisbon
research and education strategy with the wider Bologna discourse, the Commis-
sion has still not articulated a coherent vision of European higher education. Its
policy documents are frequently unclear about the nature of the challenges facing
higher education in Europe. Driving concepts such as ‘globalisation’, the rise of
the ‘knowledge economy’, the ageing workforce, international mobility and the
‘information revolution’ are presented variously (and vaguely) as threats, as solu-
tions and as context. Consequently, the Commission’s argumentation in relation
to higher education is frequently inconsistent — is the higher education sector in
the EU of a similar or lesser quality to that of the US? Should the European higher
education sector strive primarily for the distinction of its elite or should it focus
on access and outreach throughout the community? Is the diversity or convergence
of systems to be desired? Despite widespread consensus that Europe is ‘failing’ to
support and exploit research, and to provide attractive opportunities for its stu-
dents, both the sprawling Bologna and the research agendas invoked by the
Commission evidence the difficulty of defining and implementing clear solutions.
Consequently, the Bologna Process and the research agenda are fields of
debate, rather than cohesive policy lines tightly controlled by the Commission.38
The Commission itself is not a monolith (Brine, 2004; Shore, 2000), and divisions

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216 European Journal of Education

and disjunctions caused by its internal politics and competing policy perspectives
have always marked its approach to higher education (Corbett, 2005). The con-
tinuing lack of a unified vision within the Commission’s higher education policy
discourse means there is still ample space for dispute and challenge. Given that
‘social meanings are contextual, relational and contingent’ (Howarth, 2005, p.
317), it is important to continue to examine closely the disjunctions and ‘strategic
games’ (Mottier, 2005, p. 257) behind the apparent policy consensus invoked by
EU texts. There is growing resistance by some academics, for example, to being
defined quantitatively by their ‘research output’.39 Nonetheless, with the Commis-
sion acting as gatekeeper and interpreter of the higher education discourse in so
many different venues, such alternative perspectives will probably need to be
defined as relevant to the European project to be able to mount an effective
discursive challenge to the established orthodoxy.
Clearly, the European Commission is deeply and multiply implicated in the
way European higher education is constituted discursively. It has had a critical
influence in shaping the language of the European Higher Education and Research
Areas and has articulated a distinctive set of priorities for the higher education
sector. By deliberately linking the research agenda with the Bologna reforms, it
has enhanced the political weight and legitimacy of both these policy lines. Its
incorporation of the Lisbon-oriented research agenda into the Bologna priorities
is helping to bring new status, political attention and money to the academy, and
has confirmed Bologna as the accepted solution in higher education reform.
However, the messy convergence of the two policy lines also provides alternative
discursive strands which can be drawn on to affirm other perspectives. The Com-
mission’s higher education policy discourse has thus contributed to a rich pool of
concepts, values and priorities, which provides considerable space for challenges
to be articulated. The Commission is in many ways dominating the discourse, but
it has also played a significant part in opening up the discussion of the challenges
facing higher education on the European level. Its introduction of ‘Europe’ to
higher education has added a dynamic new layer to an on-going debate — which
involves an extensive range of players, as it has always done.

NOTES
1. See also http://www.ercexpertgroup.org/documents.asp for a list of contribu-
tions in support of the ERC.
2. 87% of higher education institutions in 31 countries are involved in the
ERASMUS scheme (European Commission, 2005l).
3. Amsterdam Treaty (Ch. 3, art. 149(1)): ‘The Community shall contribute
to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation
between Member States and, if necessary, by supporting and supplementing
their action, while fully respecting the responsibility of the Member States
for the content of teaching and the organisation of education systems and
their cultural and linguistic diversity’. This article is unchanged in the Euro-
pean Union’s Constitutional Treaty (Title III, Ch. V, sec. 4, art. III-182:
‘areas where the Union may take coordinating, complementary or support-
ing action’).
4. See Corbett (2005) for a detailed analysis of the ‘policy entrepreneurship’ of
certain EU officials in higher education. Corbett’s work traces the historical

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 Ruth Keeling 217

stages of creating and stabilising a Community policy domain for education,

locating the Bologna Process as the latest in a series of initiatives where
Commission officials, among others, have discovered opportunities for EU
involvement in education policy. See also Hingel (2001).
5. Maastricht Treaty, 1992 (Ch. 3, art. 126): ‘The Community shall contribute
to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between
Member States’, particularly with regard to the European dimension and
international mobility.
6. The second phase of the SOCRATES framework runs from 2000–2006 with
a budget of EUR 1850 million over the seven years: http://europa.eu.int/
comm/education/programmes/socrates/socrates_en.html.
7. The TEMPUS programme, for example, is one of the longest-running Euro-
pean Community programmes, established in 1990 to support the eventual
eastward enlargement of the EU. Today, it provides a framework for coop-
eration on modernisation projects in the higher education sector with the
EU’s immediate neighbours in the Western Balkans, Eastern Europe, Cen-
tral Asia and the Southern Mediterranean region. The EU also supports the
Erasmus Mundus programme and has established cooperation agreements
in higher education with the US, Canada, New Zealand and Japan, as well
as with Latin America through the ALFA programme, and with developing
Asian countries, including China, through the ‘Asia-Link’: http://europa.eu.
int/comm/education/policies/cooperation/cooperation_en.html.
8. ‘The Union has today set itself a new strategic goal for the next decade: to
become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the
world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs
and greater social cohesion. Achieving this goal requires an overall strategy’
(European Council, 2000).
9. ‘Meeting the Europe’s (sic) growth and jobs challenge is the key to unlocking
the resources needed to meet our wider economic, social and environmental
ambitions’ (European Commission, 2005a).
10. For a comprehensive list of the ‘Bologna’ documents, see www.bologna-
bergen.no. The next ministerial meeting will be held in London in
2007.
11. The legislation for these changes is already largely in place in most partici-
pating countries, with more than half of students being enrolled in Bachelor’s
or Master’s programmes (Bergen Communiqué 2005). See also the Eurydice
survey (2005, p. 34).
12. These are the so-called Dublin descriptors: http://www.jointquality.org/
content/descriptors/CompletesetDublinDescriptors.doc. Interestingly, these
do not match exactly with the proposed level descriptors of the EU’s Qual-
ifications Framework, an issue to which the education Ministers referred to
with concern in the Bergen Communiqué (2005). See the Commission’s
comparison in a recent Staff Working Paper (European Commission,
2005i).
13. See Line 2 of the curriculum ‘Tuning project’, supported by the Commission:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/educ/tuning/tuning_en.html.
14. For example, the Commission supported a pilot project on Joint Masters
organised by the EUA in 2002. See also http://europa.eu.int/erasmus-
mundus.

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218 European Journal of Education

15. According to this logic, education functions ‘to empower citizens to move
freely between learning settings, jobs, regions and countries, making the
most of their knowledge and competences, and to meet the goals and
ambitions of the European Union . . . to be more prosperous, inclusive,
tolerant and democratic’. (European Commission, 2004a, p. 4, also 14, 17.
See also European Commission 2005n, p. 12, p.17 and 2005m, p. 11).
16. The concept of ‘knowledge production’ is carefully defined as consisting of
four subsets (codified knowledge, embodied knowledge, collective goods and
innovation) by two policy guidance reports prepared for the Commission
(European Commission, 2002b; 2003d).
17. The Commission of course is not alone in this, as similar performance
reviews are undertaken by both national governments and international
organisations such as the OECD (see www.pisa.oecd.org).
18. Maastricht Treaty, 1992 (Ch. 3, art. 126), Amsterdam Treaty (Ch. 3, art.
149(1)).
19. This is the express objective of the new generation of ‘elite’ Community
programmes such as Erasmus Mundus and the European Research Council.
20. University networking is supported through the EU’s TEMPUS programme
and a number of ERASMUS-SOCRATES initiatives.
21. www.cordis.lu/technology-platforms/home_en.html. See also the 6th
Research Framework Programme, http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/fp6/
index_en.cfm?p=0.
22. For example, extensive consultation with the higher education community
has characterised the Commission’s work on the ‘Role of Universities in the
Europe of Knowledge’, the 7th Research Framework programme and the
embryonic European Institute of Technology.
23. For example, Action 4 of the EU’s Erasmus Mundus programme provides
financial support for projects which ‘enhance the attractiveness of European
higher education’. (see also European Commission, 2003a; 2005d, p. 5).
24. See, for example, the Commission’s biennial analysis of science and tech-
nology indicators (European Commission, 2005n).
25. See the Berlin Communiqué (2003). Two years later, the Bergen Commu-
niqué (2005) explicitly recognised the special ‘dual’ status of doctoral can-
didates as both students and first-stage researchers.
26. This is signalled by a subtle shift of emphasis within this higher education
policy discourse from the individual to the social. The Bologna Process was
originally focused at the micro-level, intended to impact on the qualifications
offered by higher education institutions, ‘where each level has the function
of preparing the student for the labour market, for further competence
building and for active citizenship’ (Nyborg, 2005). The objective was to
make higher education more relevant to the individual, allowing students to
move with greater ease between degrees, between countries and from aca-
demia to the workplace. Graduates would acquire recognised and readable
qualifications, verified by a personalised Diploma Supplement listing their
acquired credits. The new emphasis on research expands the discursive focus
to society more broadly. The Bologna Process, in its early iterations, thus
focused on making ‘Europeans’ — the Commission’s research emphasis, by
contrast, is on building ‘Europe’.

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 Ruth Keeling 219

27. ‘Hegemony’ is created when actors ‘link together a disparate set of particular
demands in a common discourse so as to construct a more universal political
project’ (Howarth, 2005, p. 323).
28. Research policy and Bologna have both defined a sphere of operation for
EU education policy through the use of geographic metaphors: the European
‘Higher Education Area’ and the ‘Research Area’.
29. Commission President Barroso has repeatedly stressed the need to involve
young people and universities in the re-launching of the Europe project (see,
for example, Barroso, 2005).
30. Multi-annual contracts, lump-sum block grants, formula funding and
performance contracting are becoming familiar funding mechanisms
throughout the European higher education sector. (See Herbst (2004))
Neave (1995, p. 63) points out, however, that, while ‘multiplying the
pipers’, the State still remains heavily implicated in the financing of
higher education.
31. See, for example, German initiatives such as the ‘Elitenetz’ in Bavaria
(http://www.elitenetzwerk-bayern.de//en/index.html) and the ‘Exzellen-
zinitiative’ sponsored jointly by the federal and Länder governments
(http://www.bmbf.de/de/1321.php).
32. This was in part caused by the political fracas arising from the OECD’s PISA
reports, which drew attention to the underperformance of Europe’s educa-
tion systems in 2002.
33. Many academics ‘are split in their view of . . . whether the time and efforts
used on implementing Bologna exceed the benefits that can be derived from
it’. (Gornitzka & Langfeldt, 2005, p. 8).
34. For comment, see Gornitzka & Langfeldt (2005). In many countries,
intellectual property rights also now devolve to institutions rather than to
individual academics.
35. Such ‘political subjects arise when agents are identified anew under condi-
tions of dislocation’ (Howarth, 2005, p. 317, p. 323).
36. For example, Commission texts support ‘the clear message . . . that tradi-
tional systems must be transformed to become much more open and flexible,
so that learners can have individual learning pathways, suitable to their needs
and interests . . .’ (European Commission, 2001, p. 5).
37. On the neglect of the role of teaching in higher education, see also Demeule-
meester & Rochat (2001). It should be noted that the Work Programme 2010
places more emphasis on teaching training and support, but this is generally
focused on secondary school teaching and vocational training.
38. The dynamic, processual nature of policy-making at the European level is
superbly evidenced by both the Bologna Process and the EU’s research
policy. The EU’s Work Programme 2010 similarly sets few concrete limits
on its expansive sphere of operation and interpretation.
39. See, for example, the results of the joint consultation on the UK’s Research
Assessment Exercise (2003), involving the four UK Funding Councils,
higher education institutions and other stakeholders: www.ra-review.ac.uk/
reports/resp/responses.pdf

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220 European Journal of Education

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