Battle for continent standards

It was a bold move, given the deeply entrenched positions of many of Europe's ancient universities and education systems but optimism is growing that, by 2010, a European area of higher education might well be established. Ministers from this unprecedented collaboration, which now comprises 40 countries extending well beyond the EU into the Balkans and Eastern Europe, meet in Bergen this month for the next phase of talks and assessment of progress so far. A final version of the European University Association's latest assessment of the process will be presented at the meeting. The draft, based on 62 visits to higher education institutes in 29 countries, claims that the Bologna reforms are being addressed at all levels in a majority of universities. But its conclusions may be a little overoptimistic, warned Monique Fouilhoux, education and employment coordinator at Education International, a federation of 340 education unions in 165 countries. Fouilhoux suggested that the institutions in the latest report might have been more advanced or positively disposed towards the process. While her members agreed that Bologna's impact was positive overall, staff were still faced with extra demands without extra resources, she said. But the goal of a transparent, fully comparable higher education system amongst participants seems to growing its own momentum in the emerging global education marketplace. " European universities have done more than join the Bologna process, " the report concludes. " They have adopted it and, in the implementation phase, are now sharing the ownership. " international cooperation between different countries of the EU, and also between EU and non-EU countries. This part is further subdivided into nine autonomous sub-programmes representing This structure will essentially allow collaborative research to proceed under similar conditions as in the current sixth Framework Programme. It is the 'Ideas' objective that brings in the surprise element. In a memorandum, the Commission states: " An autonomous European Research Council will be created to support investigator-driven frontier research carried out by individual teams competing at the European level, in all scientific and technological fields, including engineering, socioeconomic sciences and the humanities. " Under the new simplification drive, the activities of the ERC will be delegated to 'an executive agency', as will be the management of the Marie Curie fellowships. Calls for a European research council have been heard from several sides, including a conference of researchers that debated the prospect at However, it remained unclear how …