United States of Europe?

The Bologna Process aims to standardise higher education—and business schools will be particularly affected. Read original article.

This is news to me, Good news!! Bear in mind that many of the old, established universities in Europe have not competed for over 700 years. This is going to be tough.

Europe is, in theory at least, now just three years away from one of the biggest overhauls of higher education in its history. By 2010 the Bologna Process is scheduled to sweep away idiosyncratic national systems and replace them with a standard Anglo-Saxon progression of Bachelor’s degree-Master’s degree-PhD.

The main aim of Bologna is to encourage mobility among students and, consequently, greater competition among Europe’s institutions of higher education. The move is truly Europe-wide: the only European countries yet to sign up to the process are Belarus, Monaco and San Marino. This is not to say that all countries are geared up for 2010. Indeed, some of Europe’s biggest education markets are lagging behind. Spain, for example, could still be five years away from implementation. This has led to fears that, for a time at least, Europe will be running a two-track education system: those who have implemented the reforms and those who have not. Universities outside of Bologna can expect to find it tough to recruit students to an obsolescent system.

Business education will be particularly affected by the process. This is partly because students prefer to study business degrees at postgraduate, rather than undergraduate, level. But it is also because business students are more likely to move across borders to find the right school. Greater demand will lead to an explosion of Master’s programmes in management: research by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) has suggested there will be an extra 12,000 courses hitting the market (although many of these will be existing courses redesigned to comply with Bologna).

Learning their own lessons

The big increase will be in the number of MSc in Management programmes, which usually admit students straight from their undergraduate studies, rather than at the MBA level, the latter being designed for those with several years’ business experience. To compete, business schools are going to have to learn some of the entrepreneurial lessons that they are so adept at teaching. Many universities will no longer be able to rely on a stream of students from within their own ranks, as undergraduates gain greater choice of where to continue their studies. Only the best will truly relish the competition; it is safe to say that many programmes will not survive.

An increase in the number of MSc in Management programmes will have a knock-on effect for the MBA. If traditional MBA applicants, who tend to be in their mid-to late-twenties, are only a few years out of their MSc programme, it is questionable whether they will they have the will to return to business school so soon. The president of GMAC, Dave Wilson, is one of those who thinks the MBA may have to adapt. He puts forward three possible scenarios: firstly, MBA programmes might allow students with an MSc to opt out of the classes they have already studied. This could make European MBA programmes—already generally shorter than others around the globe—even shorter. Secondly, there may be an increase in the number of specialised MBAs, be it industry- or function-specific. A third possibility is that MBAs will wait longer before taking the degree. This could mean a rise in the number of executive MBA programmes on offer, which can demand upward of ten years’ work experience. Ultimately, though, employers will hold the key to the MBA’s future. Although there is concern that they don’t yet fully understand the implications of the process, and may be confused by a plethora of new programmes, much will depend on whether they will be happy to recruit—and remunerate—students with an MSc and little experience.
Only the best will truly relish the competition; it is safe to say that many programmes will not survive

European business schools also face other uncertainties. Perhaps most troubling is whether they have the infrastructure—and in particular the quality faculty—to cope with around 500,000 applicants to MSc in Management programmes by 2010. Faculty are already a scarce resource. According to the dean of Spain’s Instituto de Empresas, Santiago Iniguez de Onzono, there are very few management professors that combine all the skills that business schools are after. In particular, too many are only interested in their research and, in his words, "despise" the teaching side. While "gurus" may give a school prestige, they are of little practical use to students if they are half-hearted in the classroom. Mr Iniguez de Onzono’s solution to is to search for potential new professors not just in the PhD programmes of business schools, but also in related disciplines, such as sociology, communications and psychology. Schools then need to be prepared to spend resources to equip these scholars with the classroom skills needed to impart their knowledge.

However, diverting resources towards training faculty may prove unappealing when many will be unsure of the funding available to them. Moving from a system, such as in France, where they can be guaranteed an undergraduate student for as long as seven years, to one where they can only expect a maximum of four years, means many will have to move to a very different budgetary model. And this is before anyone has decided how these new, ultra-mobile students will be funded. Will public universities be funded centrally, for example, or will governments hand students a "euro credit" that can be cashed in at any institution across Europe? All that is certain is that the often sleepy world of European academia is in for a rude awakening. As Mr Iniguez de Onzono points out: "Bear in mind that many of the old, established universities in Europe have not competed for 700 years. This is going to be tough."