Title: Master Thesis draft 1st version Author/student: Ronald Silva Molina
Student number: 11266694
Course name: Master thesis: European politics and policy in times of crisis Name lecturer of the course: Prof. Rosa Sanchez Salgado
Second reader: Prof. John Grin
Date: 22-06-2018
Amount of words: 16252
The impact of the economic and financial crises on European
Higher Education Policy
Abstract: Europe has seen several crises of economic and financial nature from 2008 onwards. The consequences of the crisis for policy areas is of societal and scientific relevance. For society it is important to know what the consequences can be and how to deal with them accordingly. The scientific relevance is to fill the gap of knowledge due to a lack of research on the
relationship between crisis and education policy. In order to fill this gap, this research focused on a European case, the European higher education policy and the crises period from 2008 until 2016. By using process tracing and statistical analysis, theories will be tested for this particular policy field, to see if mechanisms will be found in this scenario. The results indicate that crisis has had limited effect on the education policy content and implementation, but no effect on the formal decision-making process. This marks the beginning of explaining how the relationship between the crisis and higher education functions.
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Table of content
Table of content 1
Acknowledgement 2
Chapter 1 Introduction 2
Chapter 2 Literature review 5
2.1 The concept crisis 5
2.2 Impacts of crisis on the education policy content 6
2.3 The decision-making process 7
Chapter 3 Theoretical framework 10
3.1 The research model 10
3.2 Crisis and the decision-making process 11
3.3 Crisis and policy 13
Chapter 4 Methodology 15 4.1 Process tracing 15 4.2 Operationalization 17 4.3 Data description 18 4.3.1 Missing data 19 Chapter 5 Analysis 20
5.1 Analysis Part A: the institutions involved 20
5.1.1 The European Union in general 20
5.1.2 The Bologna Process and the European Higher Education Area 23
5.2 Content analysis 25
5.2.1. The starting points 25
5.2.2. The trends of the process 26
5.3. Analysis Part C: the content and expenditure 27
5.3.1. The initial objectives and towards the EHEA 27
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5.3.3 The levels of GDP and expenditure 31
Chapter 6 Results 32
6.1 The crisis and the decision-making process 32
6.2 The content and implementation 33
Chapter 7 Conclusion 35
Chapter 8 Discussion 37
8.1 Generalization and theory 37
8.2 Weak points 38
8.3 Suggestions future research 39
References 40
Tables 43
Table 1 Hypotheses 43
Table 2 Correlation Analysis per country 44
Table 3 Regression Results overview on relative expenditure 55 Table 4 Regression Results overview on absolute expenditure 56
Table 5 Regression analysis per country 57
Graphs 110
Graph 1.1 Graph GDP level – lowest scoring countries 110
Graph 1.2 Graph GDP level – middle scoring countries 111
Graph 1.3 Graph GDP level – highest scoring countries 112
Graph 2.1 % of GDP to public expenditure on higher education – first half 113 Graph 2.2 % of GDP to public expenditure on higher education –second half 114 Graph 3.1 Absolute public expenditure on higher education – lowest scoring group 115 Graph 3.2 Absolute public expenditure on higher education –middle scoring group 116 Graph 3.3 Absolute public expenditure on higher education – highest scoring group 117
Appendices 118
Appendix 1: The research model 118
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Acknowledgement
I want to express my gratitude to the people who supported me throughout this master thesis, of which three specifically. First and foremost professor R. Sanchez Salgado, for guiding me throughout the past months and giving critical feedback to improve the master thesis. From my personal live two people I want to thank explicitly. Miss S. Schad, post-master UvA student, for providing me with additional critical feedback and controlling my work. Finally, mister M. Silva Molina for controlling the thesis as well.
Chapter 1 Introduction
Introduction
The European Union (EU) has faced multiple economic challenges in the past. The economic crisis in 2008 from the United States, started the global economic crisis and had economic and financial effects in Europe as well. In Europe, this economic was followed by a financial debt crisis and recession in the European countries. It became a conglomerate of multiple
interconnected crisis. For short in the rest of this thesis it will be called the crisis1. These times of crises has put a lot of pressure on the European Union and the decisions that had to be made. During these unique times of crisis, interesting developments can be found within the different institutions of the EU and the policies that follow. A crisis of an economic and financial nature can impact several policy fields at the same time (Falkner 2016). This master thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of how a crisis can influence the content of European policies. Research has shown that an economic or financial crisis can lead to changes in the decision-making process within the EU and the policy outcomes (Falkner 2016, Boin et al. 2009). This master thesis will aim to contribute with a particular case study, namely the influence of the global financial crisis and economic crisis on the European higher education policy, starting from 2008. Over the course of the years, a lot of research has been done on the effects of the
economic crisis on several policy fields, but not many political scientists have researched the effect on the (higher) education policy field specifically. Most of these researches on the European Union were in the fields where the ordinary legislative procedure (co-decision) was used and not the Open Methods of Coordination, which is the case for the education policy field.
4 Thus, we can see that there is a lack of knowledge on how the crisis can affect this particular policy field, which is why this case is very unique in this regard.
It will contribute to the current existing scientific political literature and attempt to fill the previously described gap of knowledge to some degree. The researcher aims to do so, by focusing on the effects of the crisis on higher education policy. The main research question and the sub questions will be the following:
Main research question: How, to what extend and why has the conglomerate of interconnected economic and financial crises influenced the higher education policy of the European Union in the period of 2008-2016?
Sub question 1: How, to what extend and why has the conglomerate of interconnected economic and financial crises influenced the decision-making process of the higher education policy of the European Union in the period of 2008-2016?
Sub question 2: How, to what extend and why did the decision-making process change, in favour of either suprantionalism or intergovernmentalism, in the higher education policy field of the European Union in the period of 2008-2016?
Sub question 3: How, to what extend and why has the conglomerate of interconnected economic and financial crises influenced the content of the higher education policy of the European Union in the period of 2008-2016?
Sub question 4: How, to what extend and why has the crisis influenced the implementation with regards to the overall public funding of higher education by the European Member States in the period of 2008-2016?
For society it is relevant and important to find out how economic pressures impact the world of policy and politics, especially when living in a complex system such as the European Union. Researching how economic pressures can affect certain policy fields and their outcomes, helps policy makers as well as citizens to better understand the complexities of living in the EU and gives insights into how to handle crises. Especially from a citizen’s point of view, economic crises and their consequences on EU and national policies, have an immediate effect on everyday life. Education and employment are, for example, a major priority for both the EU and its Member States. Students who recently graduated struggle entering the workforce in several countries and the European Union tries to tackle it with their policy on higher education. Since economic crises and unemployment are closely related, it will be useful to have a look at the higher education policy, because it aims to positively influence unemployment rates, making it very closely related to the different economic and financial crises. Finally, it is exciting to find out whether institutions and political actors are able to take action during times of crisis and how
5 they evolve because of it (Falkner 2016). Lessons can be learned whether the crisis will
pressure the decision making process into making a decision faster or that the pressure will stagnate the process and lead to a stalemate. This research can help give insight into that process.
With regards to scientific relevance, the European integration process is a continuous subject for research. For example, many researchers reflect on how the developments that the EU makes, during times of crisis, relate to the European integration as a whole. It has been argued that the decision-making process has changed because of the crisis (Falkner 2016), which in turn also affects the policy outcome. It thus is interesting to see how new developments continue to change the direction of the scientific debate, especially between supranationalism and
intergovernmentalism. The most common scientific debate centers around the decision-making regime within the institutions, in particular whether intergovernmentalism (the Member States) or supranationalism (the EU-institutions) dominates and how the outcomes shape the EU and the European integration. While this scientific debate may exist already for quite a long time, it hasn't been researched in the context of the European higher education policy field specifically. Even though, due to the new crises, the topic of European integration remains very popular for
researchers, there is no research on the how education policy is influenced by the crisis. This in turn gives new opportunities to fill the gaps of the current knowledge, in this thesis with a case study on the education policy field. While research definitely exists on the effects of the
economic crisis on different (policy) fields within the society such as health, foreign policy, financial policy, environmental policy, education expenditures and more, the education policy field, however, has been left out even though evidence shows that these crises do show broad effects on all these different policy fields (Falkner 2016, Burns and Tobin 2016, Ghita 2014). In addition, this policy field has a different procedure of making policy and decisions. It will bring an extra uniqueness, compared to other research, by focusing on a policy field which uses the Open Methods of Coordination, instead of the Ordinary Legislative Procedure.
The thesis will be structured as the following. In the next section an overview of the existing literature will be made of the different concepts and scientific debates related to the current topic of this thesis. The following chapters, 3 and 4, will consist of the theoretical framework and methodology. This will form the basis of how this research will be conducted. In chapter 5 the results will be discussed. The final section will be the conclusion and discussion, in which the results and its implications will be related to the existing debate and a final answer will be given to the research question. Also, the limitations to this research will be outlined.
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Chapter 2 Literature review
In order to properly execute this research and build upon previous knowledge, a critical look has to be made at the existing scientific body of literature in order to distil the relevant knowledge. After conducting the literature review in this section, the theoretical framework will be put together in order to analyse the data systematically. This thesis will focus on the following three areas: the concept crisis, the political impact of an economic crisis on policy and education and the debate around European integration.
Chapter 2.1 The concept of crisis
A crisis can be very different in nature. Whether it is an economic, social, cultural or any other type of crisis, it brings several challenges towards the region hit by it. Dyson and 't Hart (2013) extensively discussed this concept and the conceptualization of it. Basically, there are three core elements that define a crisis in politics and government, which are also relevant for this case study. First, core values are under threat. When a financial crisis hits a region, it can pose a threat on job security, the level of welfare, health or education, via budget cuts. Second, there is a sense of urgency during this period of crisis. In order to prevent further decline of the
economy, there is little to no time for decisions to be made. This pressures policymakers to come up with a quick solution, without having the luxury of time to deal with the problem at hand or learning from a trial and error approach. The third characteristic is a high degree of
uncertainty. This refers to the situation at hand and what aspects are in fact uncertain, such as the causes, consequences, possibilities for solutions, possible reactions on these solutions, the potential consequences of the solutions and more (Ibid.). When looking at an economic or financial crisis we see these elements return, which results in pressures on the decision-making process and the policies which a government or other political system needs to decide on. We can see these elements return in the concept economic crisis.
Cazan and Cucos (2013) looked at the different meanings of the concept economic crisis itself. In their research on definitions of a crisis, they highlight the impact of crises on people’s lives in the long term. They conclude that a crisis is:
[…]“that event from which we imagine the worst and which changes people’s life and activity. Crisis has its own nature, its ignoring and minimizing2 don’t help.
7 During a crisis, our whole universe is devastated. Nothing is at its normal place.
The present crisis is a system crisis and it will have effects on a long term” (Cazan and Cucos, 2013, pp. 24)
This definition of crisis is similar to that of Dyson and ‘t Hart. The consequences of the crisis in this definition are also described as dire and creates a need to change the system that society has during that period of crisis. Also core values of the society are under threat and plans need to be made to deal with the crisis, which brings us to crisis process and practice.
Mehta and Xavier (2012) did a historical review of the literature on the crisis process and practice research. They took a focus on how managing the crisis was done in practice. Their literature review resulted in a thorough mapping of the management theory and crisis domains over time. They distilled three main domains and put them in chronological order: Firstly, crisis planning, secondly, building and testing predictive models and lastly, mapping and measuring external environmental influences. The first domain refers to preparing to manage a potential crisis, by making protocols and plans in advance. The second domain continues to develop from the first domain. Building and testing the models made throughout crisis planning, looking at their effectiveness in practice and searching for guidelines for the people with decision-making powers to manage the crisis. The final domain took a different approach than traditionally applied in typical research at that time. It looked at external influences, specifically intercultural variability, social responsibility and social media. It looks at the communication and influences of the intercultural and political systems on crisis management. To conclude, multiple interactions between crises and the political, societal and economical systems can be found. The next section will discuss the impact of a crisis on society and policies in more detail.
Chapter 2.2 Impacts of crisis on the education policy content
In this section the impacts of crisis on society are analysed, more specifically on policy and education. Ghita (2014) has shown that the economic crisis has put pressure on the education and training process in Europe. However, the research has shown evidence that despite the economic crisis, the EU hasn’t stopped improving on education policies and implementation after the first year, 2008, of the global economic crisis. In fact, the overall levels of GDP growth as well as the share of public expenditure on education relative to GDP in the EU have increased after the crisis (Ibid.). On the other hand, there was a negative influence found on the non-financial aspect, such as participation rates, school expectancy and early leavers, and a larger
8 negative trend seen in the labour market. Lastly, there was a higher youth unemployment rate and there were more early leavers, and lower participation rates in education after the crisis.
Similarly, influence from the crisis on policy in general can be found. The crisis can be seen as an externally imposed motivation to restructure how areas, such as higher education, should be organised and implemented. This can be seen, for example, in the acceleration of neoliberal reforms in Greece’s universities (Zmas 2014). Here, a process of Europeanization could be found, which will be discussed further in the next section. When looking at a different example of how a crisis influences policy, we see other possible determinants, such as the change in the amount of resources available for a certain policy area, the overall scope of policies and also the policy content itself (Burns and Tobin 2016). In addition, Falkner (2016) showed that the content or initial set goals could be redefined or deadlines changed when a crisis hits. This is due to the situation changing. At the beginning of a policy in time, the situation was different and perhaps more favourable to set ambitious goals. These initial goals can then appear to not be feasible anymore when a crisis comes to play. The crisis then brings the need to adapt the goals to more realistic ones.
So the global economic crisis, showed not only economic and financial consequences, but also political ones (DeBarbeleden and Viju 2013). The degree to which policy makers try to respond to a crisis differ per situation and country (Gandrud and O’Keeffe 2017). Decisions on policy content can moreover be influenced by other political actors. In their pursuit of their own political agenda, they will use the available tools to pursue their preferences (Ibid.). When it comes to higher education, one of these preferences can stem from the European discourse, trying to influence the higher education policy towards the preferences decided on the EU-level (Ioannou et al. 2015). The political interaction and dynamics between the crisis and European integration will be discussed in the section below.
Chapter 2.3 The decision-making process
Ever since the start of the European Union, a process has started for the member states which impacted their national sovereignty. In different policy fields efforts were made in order to align a common policy guideline for the European member states. This in turn also meant that member states had to give in some of their sovereignty, in order to put forward a common European policy for the member states. This deepening and widening of European functions in public policy territory, has met its fair shares of struggles and hurdles by the member states, trying to prevent European influence (Alexiadou & Lange 2013). Nonetheless a supranational dimension in the decision making process came to be. Overall, an intergovernmentalist decision regime
9 dominated, meaning that the member states had the most influence and that the EU was a mechanism to bring out their interests. By institutionalizing the decision making process on this different level new dynamics came to be. After some time, scientists have shown a shift in the decision making towards a more supranational one. This lead to an academic debate on which regime dominated more supranationalism versus the intergovernmentalism in the politics of the European Union. In the research of Tsebelis and Garrett (2001), they showed how the treaties influenced the relations between supranational institutions and the intergovernmental Council of Ministers. In some cases supranational institutions would become more powerful or lose in power.
In the case of European integration within the education policy field, efforts can be seen of deflecting European influence by the member states. For example, the United Kingdom has shown this behavior. By influencing the following three aspects the UK has managed to deflect influence to certain extent: limiting organizational resources in particular institutional structures, limiting communication between the domestic and international policy workers and keeping the level of discourse focused on UK sovereignty (Alexiadou & Lange 2013). On the other hand, we can see other member states are more willing to go for the changes proposed, such as the Netherlands (Lorenz 2006). The Netherlands showed early on key elements of previous
agreements in the Bologna Process. Also when looking back at the example of Zmas (2014) and the Greece higher education case study, we can see changes in the system which are more aligned with the European goals.
Nonetheless of the struggles we can see that European Policy spaces are being made and education is no exception (Lawn 2011, Zmas 2014). The EU tries to construct European spaces to make Europe governable. In doing so it uses for the educational policy space an approach that didn’t infringe national sovereignty, but worked around it. It did so by using experts, developing common tools and categories. By building European education in such a way of standardizing, relying on experts and excluding politics, it standardized the European Education Policy Space. This however also meet its fair share of critique and discussions as well with regards to its effectiveness and outcome. Livingstone (2003) showed how national policy makers are now under more pressure due to the influence of the EU and pressure to meet certain common objectives, benchmarks and quality indicators. This could mean a potential loss in diversity in Europe, due to the efforts of standardizing (higher) education too much.
Another critique is about the effectiveness on how the European Policy space for higher education is trying to achieve its goals. In general, there are “two types of law” that the EU uses for making policy spaces. The first type is soft law. Soft law refers to rules of conduct that can have practical effects, but no legally binding forces behind it which can result in sanctions
10 (Trubek and Trubek 2005; Trubek et al 2005). The second type is hard law and refers to legally binding rules set via treaties, regulations or directives (Trubek and Trubek 2005; Trubek et al 2005). The use of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is seen as soft law. Soft law leads to making guidelines and including many stakeholders. Its effectiveness compared towards hard laws is still debated. Soft laws are more flexible to change, but leads to less uniformity and implementation is difficult due to the lacks of clarity and precision. On the other hand, unlike hard laws, soft laws do respect the diversity of the different Member States and is more flexible to adopt changes to achieve optimal results.
With regards to higher education, we see a the use of soft law with the OMC (Magalhäes et all. 2013). It is used to converge national policies with European goals. As a consequence European discourses influenced the national policy processes of the Member States. Another consequence is that the policy process doesn’t follow a simple bottom-up not top-down approach anymore (Ibid.). By changing this process approach the national sovereignty is challenged by the EU. The EU institutions keep influencing the national policy makers and the European Commission tries to do it in a top down approach (Veiga and Amaral 2006). This proves to be impossible during the Bologna Process. There is no linear policy process anymore, but rather a rather a process that functions at multiple levels at once. The Bologna Process and the higher education policy work on the European, national and local levels. Doing this created the European dimensions and influence over Member States, albeit not with sanctions and legally binding rules, but with creating guidelines, common goals and European discourses.
All in all, we see a general agreement that within the higher education decision making process, there is more tendency towards a cooperation and inclusion based approach than a individual one. This will include the role of the EU more, leading to less intergovernmentalism. The European institutions are influencing the higher education institutions with policy discourses and research policies (Magalhaes et al. 2013). It also appeared that EU set goals of reforming the education system are being met and the Member States are following them. This is an argument for supranationalism being more dominant than intergovernmentalism within the education policy space.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical framework
In order to properly research and find the potential relationship between the economic crisis and policy we shall make a theoretical framework. This will help structure the research and show the assumptions in a clear model, which will enable us to answer the research questions. This section on theoretical framework will be divided in three parts. The first part will be explaining the main research model. The second part will discuss the relationships that are involved with the intervening variable, which is the decision-making process. And the third part will explain the direct relationship between the crisis and higher education policy.
Chapter 3.1 The research model
First let's take another look at the main research question: How, to what extend and why has the conglomerate of interconnected economic and financial crises influenced the higher education policy of the European Union in the period of 2008-2016?
Since this research is focused on the influence of crisis on policy, we take into account the context of the decision-making process. So, in order to research the multiple relationships on a general level, a proper model has to be made, see Appendix 1. There will be three variables in this model. The independent explaining variable will be the economic and financial crisis.
Because this research has the starting point of a crisis, the crisis will be the explaining variable for variation in the dependent variable. However, this is not the only arrow one can see in the model. In order to tackle the context in which policy making is in and how much that is influenced by the rules of the process, an intervening variable is necessary to be added. This intervening variable is the decision-making process. The rules of the political game, greatly influences the content of the policy that are produced. Then again, the crisis comes here into play. Crisis can also influence the need to change certain rules, when the already existing rules did not manage to cover the new situation caused by a crisis. It can also lead to new rules being made, due to a complete lack of appropriate rules. That can happen when a crisis brings such a new situation, that it wasn’t possible to have these rules, guidelines or contingency plans, since such an event never has taken place before and wasn’t expected either.
In general, we search for the causal relationship between the crisis and the policy on two different routes. The direct one is where the crisis directly influences the policy content and implementation. The indirect route looks into the influence of crisis on the decision-making
12 process, which in turn influences the content of the policy. In order to understand these routes better, we will look into defining the concepts related to them.
Starting with the dependent variable, which is the higher education policy. The focus of this research will be mainly on the European level of higher education policy. The reason for this choice was the interest to look into the effects on education policy field. The scope of the
research also contains the link of higher education with the crisis. This view is also shared by the EC. According to the EU, higher education institutions (HEI) are crucial for developing highly skilled human capital, economic growth, innovation and maintaining economic growth
(Ministerial Communiqué 2009). During the analysis the word HE policy will be short for higher education policy, a policy that focuses on the higher education in Member States.
Chapter 3.2 Crisis and the decision-making process
This section deals with the arrows A and B of the model in appendix 1 and the next concepts that need to be defined. It will first discuss the conceptualization of crisis and decision-making process. That will be followed with an explanation of the assumptions of the sub questions, which led to the hypotheses. Doing so will show the theoretical framework of the indirect influence of crisis on policy, via the decision-making process.
When looking at the model and crisis as the independent variable a proper concept has to be chosen, in order to better understand and research the scope of the potential influences. Which in turn means that the concept crisis, which is the starting point of the research, has to be defined properly. Due to the scope of the research being on a broad scape, the choice was made to also go for a broad definition and relates to the policy process.
This concept has two parts, the characteristics of the concept crisis in itself and the type of crisis we're dealing with in this research at the moment. Firstly, the type of crisis is a financial and economic one. The crisis that is being looked here is a multitude of economic and financial crises happening one after another and are closely related. The global economic crisis in 2008 started in the United States (US), showed consequences in Europe later on. It started to become economic crisis in the EU, which in turn led to a sovereign debt crisis and then the eurozone crisis and economic recession crisis. Since they are closely related and overlap in time, it is difficult to separate one crisis from another. This means it is also more difficult to deduce which precise crisis caused what exact outcome when explaining variation in the depending variable. In order to overcome this hurdle, the focus will be on a more general level with regards to economic and financial pressures that come from these crises. In short, the word crisis here relates to the economic and financial crises over the period of 2008-2016 that affected the European countries.
13 Secondly, the scientific basis of the concept crisis by itself used in this research is
inspired by Dyson and 't Hart (2013). In their conceptualization they show three important elements of a crisis. These elements can be applied to any crisis and I believe are applicable here as well. The first element is a threat to core values. The financial pressures that come from the crisis researched in this thesis, threaten the level of education and budget cuts on education. The second element is the urgency. When certain goals with a deadline have been set, there will be work pressure on the policy workers trying to meet that goal. The pressure further intensifies when the crisis makes the situation more difficult to reach the set goals. For example, in order to prevent increasing unemployment and school dropout, the level of education is seen as a key element to tackle these potential threats. The sense of urgency increases, due to the crisis hitting the region and a faster need for decisions and policies in order to prevent further damage from the crisis. The third element is uncertainty. It remains to be seen how much education is influenced by the crisis, but budget cuts and changes to education systems and how they are funded, brings uncertainty in itself. One cannot know beforehand if these changes are for the better or for the worse. Also, the consequences of certain higher education policies for the universities, brings uncertainty. If the crisis forces change in how education is funded, whether universities can actually survive these changes financially speaking remains to be seen. The other uncertain outcome of policy and changes caused by the crisis is how the level of quality of the universities will be affected. So, also uncertainty can be found back in the potential
relationship between crisis and education.
Having the concept crisis defined broadly in this manner, it will become easier to apply it to the subject of research and on a broader level. This is necessary in this research since the focus of the study is mainly on the European level and not extremely local single case study oriented. The different effects cannot be included in the research if this basic concept would be too narrowly defined. It would miss the multiple effects, due to the scope of the concept crisis and its multiple effects on the depending variable.
The next concept would be the decision-making process, in which two choices are made. By making these two choices, it will enable the research to have a broad scope, yet specific enough at the same time. First, the concept decision-making process looks into the participation and influence of different actors, the interaction between them and how the decisions will be made (Knutelská 2011). This research looks into the potential changes during the period 2006-2016. In order to answer the sub questions and relate to the discussion on supranational decision-making regime versus the intergovernmental decision-making regime in the European Union, the perspective on participation, influence, interaction and deciding are essential. Second, the concept refers in this research to the way decisions are made within the higher
14 education policy specifically. This is necessary since the research is on the same policy field and the process is very different since the EU applies the Open Method of Coordination work
method.
The assumptions are put into the hypotheses, see Table 1. Since the route in the model is the influence of crisis on policy via the decision-making process, an analysis will be made into the changes in the decision-making process caused by the crisis, which is arrow A, with the hypotheses A1, A2 and A3. Then the next step is linking the process to policy itself, so arrow B with hypotheses B1 and B2. We are searching which institutions are more dominant, which can imply the content of the policies' content. These two arrows in the model are very closely related. For example, imagine the crisis would push for a change in the decision-making process in favor of more European integration, due to limited resources on the national level, by giving the
European Commission more rights on deciding the content of the higher education. This means that in this aspect hypotheses A1, A2 and B1 would be accepted and A3 and B2 rejected. The crisis in this example did make change in the process and in favor of supranational institutions as opposed of Member States. Whether the change in the settings and roles are the
consequential European discourse that could come out of it (Tsebelis and Garrett 2013; Lawn 2011; Zmas 2014; Magelhaes et al. 2013; Ioannou et al. 2015) are with these multiple
assumptions and hypotheses covered and will help answer the research sub questions and main question.
Chapter 3.3 Crisis and policy
The next assumptions to deal with are that of arrow C. Looking at the more direct influence of the crisis on policy, we find three important ones in the literature review. For hypothesis C1, it is the amount of resources that will probably be affected (Tobin 2016). The crisis brings financial pressure and budget cuts can easily follow because of it. Looking at the amount of resources, put available for the higher education policy field and higher education in itself, will help find the economic and financial consequences and choices due to the crisis. In hypothesis C2, we shall search for the initial set goals and deadlines and how they have changed during the period 2006-2016. According to Falkner (2016) due to pressure of a crisis these initial set goals and deadlines may prove to be impossible to reach in the set time. Which is why it is also expected that in the higher education policy field, the same can be expected, due to financial impact of the crisis on all Member States. The financing of higher education itself, however, will be tackled differently. This may be more related to the implementation part of the policy, it is still very important to measure the crisis' impact on this part of the policy. It is expected that when Gross
15 Domestic Product (GDP) growth is found, there will also be a growth in the share of public expenditure of GDP in the same period (Ghita 2016). Following this logic, we can expect that when the crisis hits and GDP declines, so does the public expenditure on higher education. When the economies slowly recover over time, GDP grows again, it can then be expected that public expenditure increases as well. This can vary per country, due to the difference per country in their economic recoveries.
All in all, we expect variations caused by the crisis in all the hypotheses described above. Since the time period is 10 years, within this period it is quite possible to find variations in some years caused by the crisis and in other years not. In general, we expect for the years 2006 until 2010 little variation for the higher education policy and business as usual, due to the crisis that still had to start and actually really reach the EU. The variation will be after the crisis hit, so a difference between the pre-crisis and crisis period Before we can see whether the expectations will be met or not, a proper methodology has to be made in order to operationalize the concepts and methods described above.
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Chapter 4 Methodology
In this chapter the research method will be described. This research is a qualitative and quantitative research. For the hypotheses besides C2, relating to the GDP and public expenditure, a statistical analysis will be used. All the other hypotheses will be answered by using qualitative data. This will be a single case study over a period of 10 years. The case is the European higher education policy. Findings could be generalized, but should be done with care. Generalization from this research could be for other European policy fields where the Open Methods of Coordination during the same times and types crises. In order to answer the research question the process tracing technique will also be used. In the following sections the choice and application of process tracing will be explained. Afterwards a description of the data and data collection will be given.
Chapter 4.1 Process tracing
Since this is a research looking into the policy process, which is influenced by an external phenomenon and is searching how the relationship actually works, the appropriate method of conducting research is process tracing. Process tracing is a "procedure for identifying steps in a causal process leading to the outcome of a given dependent variable of a particular case in a particular historical context (Venesson 2008: 231)." In this research the dependent variable is the higher education policy, the independent variable is the economic and financial crises from 2008 until 2016. This time period is the particular historical context and the particular case is the relationship between them. The process tracing method has three main uses, which are theory-testing, theory-building and explaining outcome.
Each of these uses serves a different purpose. The first one, theory-testing, serves the purpose of finding the presence of a causal mechanism and check whether it functions as theorized. Theory-building has the purpose of identifying what the causal mechanism is between two variables. The third one, explaining outcome use, focuses on identifying what mechanisms explain certain outcomes. In this study, the first usage will be mainly the focus. Theory-testing process tracing fits the best in this scenario. Since previous research, see literature review, already has shown that crisis does influence certain policy areas, some mechanisms are already established. What remains to be seen is whether the theories are present in the European policy area of higher education and in the system of the Open Methods of Coordination.
17 Kay and Baker (2015) show how useful process tracing is for policy research. In their extensive literature review on process tracing, they show that for the complexity in the field of the policy process, process tracing is a very valuable tool. Process tracing helps putting the policy events in right order, resulting in, for example, a comprehensive historical overview. This
overview can show how the causal mechanisms work between the dependent, independent and intervening variables. Due to this complexity and process tracing being a very useful tool for it, it is a good research method for answering research questions with how in the framing of it. In the main research question, the word how is used. This research is searching to explain whether the crisis does influence the higher education policy and via what causal mechanisms it does.
The strength in framing the research question in this way and using process tracing is the flexibility in finding the causal mechanisms. In process tracing there are a lot of points of
observation and systematic comparison between the collected data, which enables the
researcher to identify and explain general tendencies and variation. Whether the collected data affirms a certain causal inference, depends on the results of the analysis. Which means that, in addition, even if the theories and assumptions tested here will not explain the dependent variable outcome, the process tracing method still has the explanation included. When formulating hypotheses Collier (2011) showed that by using a doubly decisive test within the process tracing, it will become useful to leverage the results of one hypothesis to the other. What is meant by this, is that hypotheses are formulated in such a way that if one gets accepted that others get rejected automatically. This will be used for the hypotheses H1.2, H1.3, H2.1 and H2.2. These hypotheses are related to the discussion between the supranationalism and intergovernmentalism and which is more dominant in the decision-making process. If Member States would have a more prominent role in the higher education policy field, then it would automatically mean that supranational institutions like the European Commission would have less influence and vice versa.
In general, this research will use the process tracing method, by focusing on qualitative and some quantitative data. The data will help in making an overview of the events related to the higher education policy field. Within this overview a search will be made for trends, changes in the trends and the link between those changes and the hypotheses. This will answer the
hypotheses, which in turn will help answer the research questions. How this will be done, will be explained in the section, where the operationalization will be discussed divided over the several hypotheses.
18 Chapter 4.2 Operationalization
The analysis will be divided in three parts. As a side note, the interviews conducted will be used to answer as many hypotheses as possible, depending on the data that will be retrieved from it.
The first one will focus on the hypotheses A1, A2, and A3. The assumptions behind these hypotheses is that crisis will influence the decision-making process (Falkner 2016). We search for changes in how decisions came to be and identify which institutions played which part. If the crisis can explain these changes, then the hypothesis A1 will be accepted. For A2 and A3 the question will be to see whether these changes are in favor of more
intergovernmental institutions, rather than supranational institutions or vice versa. By analyzing the content official documents and website of the Bologna Process. In the Communiqué’s and website, descriptions on the governance of European higher education policy is described.
The outcomes from these three hypotheses will then influence the outcome of the second part of the analysis. The second part focuses on the outcomes of the changes in the policy content. Will there be more policies which propose changes in favor of either the
supranational or intergovernmental institutions? This means that the main points of the policies have to be found and interpreted in order to answer the first two sub questions and hypotheses A1 until B2.
The third and final part of the analysis will focus on the direct influence of crisis on the higher education policy. In order to find this relationship and answer the related sub questions and hypothesis, three hypotheses have been made, which all focus on the resources and content of the higher education policy. Hypotheses C1 will focus on the content of these
European higher education policies. Changes will be searched in the initial set goals (Ibid.) and content especially related to the crisis. The aim is to identify changes between the pre-crisis period and during the crisis. The search is for initial set goals and deadlines in the policies to change when the crisis hit. Changes in the content should be found around
Finally, hypothesis C2, is meant to give a addition to this research by also looking at a small part of the implementation of EU policy by the Member States. This will be done by looking at the GDP and amount of expenditure towards the higher education from each Member State, over the period of 2008-2016. These data set will give insight to the overall economic
development of the countries and the financial aspect of higher education (Ghita 2014) Expectations are that when the crises hit, the GDP drops and also the amount of money in absolute numbers as in percentage of the GDP drops with it (Ghita 2014). These expenditures contain all the possible expenditures towards education. From subsidies to scholarships to
19 funding educational activities for private and non-profit organization. The data originates from Worldbank. In order to correct for inflation the data is chosen in the form of GDP Purchasing Power Parity in standard US dollar fixed in 2011. This is done to prevent doing analysis biased by inflation. The other variable used in the statistical analysis is the % of GDP to public higher education expenditure. This is a percentage number between 0 and 2.5, also from the
Worldbank data. The absolute number of expenditure is manually calculated by multiplying the previous two data sets to create this data. With the three sets of data a correlation and
regression analysis have been done. Both these tests were done via the program Excel. The regression analysis, was a simple regression analysis. In the model of this research the
assumption was that the GDP of a country explains the public expenditure to higher education. The GDP served the independent variable for both the relative and absolute amount of public expenditure. These tests were done separately since the two types of expenditure are not related to each other. The results can be found in the appendix.
Chapter 4.3 Data
The data that will be analyzed in this research is for the most part found via online search engines, like Google and the online library of the University of Amsterdam. Also the different search engines on the websites from the different European institutions were used, like that of the EC and EP. The non online data comes from the interviews. People who worked in the higher education policy field were found by calling the office of the higher education department for interviews. In this case I called the department in Belgium and was recommended to call two secretary workers for the interview.
The data that will be used are the following:
Scientific literature. These scientific reports are related to the topic of this research. They will provide descriptive data relevant to the time period and hypotheses in this research. Since these reports already have found data and give a clear overview of the trends and changes, it will be very useful and efficient to use this as data.
Policy documents. These official documents are from the EU institutions themselves. These will be used to find the actual content of the higher education policy. Between those documents over time comparisons can be made to find trends and changes between 2008-2016. The official documents used in this research are the Ministerial Communiqué’s, Bologna Declaration,
20 Interviews. Several interviews were conducted with workers within the higher education
policy field. These interviews will be semi-structured interviews. This is to find specific data to answer the hypotheses and avoid unrelated data. The questions will follow the same division in three topics as the hypotheses are. It also cannot be a fully structured interview, since a predetermined order with limited number of responses cannot contain the possibilities of answers that determine the content of higher education policy, nor properly describe the work of the people involved in this policy field. See appendix 1 for the interview questions.
Statistics. The numbers meant here are the GDP per country, the expenditures in absolute amounts per country, the expenditures as in percentage of the GDP per country. The first two data sets are used for characterizing overall economic
development and the education sector financially. The Worldbank describes the GDP term them as the following:
o GDP, PPP constant 2011 international $.
PPP GDP is gross domestic product converted to international dollars using purchasing power parity rates. An international dollar has the same purchasing power over GDP as the U.S. dollar has in the United States. GDP is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation of natural resources. Data are in constant 2011 international dollars.
Chapter 4.3.1 Missing data
In two sets data is missing. In the Eurostat data there is no data for Iceland from before 2012 and Romania in 2006 with regards to the government expenditure as percentage of the GDP. The other data that is missing is the interviews. Efforts were made after the first contact with the department of European Higher Education in Brussels to arrange interviews. After receiving two phone numbers of secretaries who were supposed to know more of the field, both were
unavailable. Calling them almost daily did not help and the contact could not be established with the interviewees. Unfortunately as a result the potential data cannot be used in the research to compara with the other found data.
21
Chapter 5 The Analysis
In this chapter the analysis will be described. Since this research uses the process tracing technique in order to answer the research question, the analysis will give an overview to find trends and changes. In the following sections the analysis will be divided in four parts, just like the theoretical framework and methodology explained. The first part will look at the decision-making process of higher education policy and how this changed. This contains a description of which institutions are involved in the making of the European Higher Education Policy and how they contribute. The second part will look into how much the influence of these involved political actors changed. This again looks into trends and changes, attempting to find which kind of institutions or actors became more prominent, the supranational or intergovernmental ones. The third part of the analysis, will give overviews of the numbers (expenditures on higher
education, GDP, and the regression analysis) and content of the higher education policy field. In this last part of the analysis, a search will be made for identifying trends and changes as
well. The final part will summarise the analysis, while answering the sub questions. This will be done by looking back at the hypotheses made for each sub question, answering them and reflecting back to the theories they are based on.
Chapter 5.1 Analysis Part A: the institutions involved
Chapter 5.1.1 The European Union in general
European Higher Education policy was a part of the general Education field which came to be one of the EU competences after the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Ever since then, the EU had a supporting role towards the Member States. This is due to the subsidiarity principle. The subsidiarity principle means that the policies of the particular field are not decided on the European level but by the Member States themselves. Throughout time and several treaties later, the core of this role has not changed in itself. However, the roles of the EU were in fact further defined in accordance with this supporting role (Franke 2017). After the Maastricht Treaty, these developments took place in the following treaties: Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Treaty of Lisbon. The treaties lead into the following objectives of the EU:
"Developing a European dimension in education;
Encouraging mobility of students and teachers, by encouraging, inter alia, the academic recognition of diplomas and periods of study;
22 Promoting cooperation between educational establishments;
Developing exchanges of information and experience on issues common to the education systems of Member States; and
Encouraging the development of distance education" (Franke 2019).
Besides the initiatives made by the Member States themselves, the EU is actively involved in another process for developing higher education policy, which is aligned with its objectives described above. This process is called the Bologna Process. The Bologna Process is a global institution in which different countries and the EU are aiming towards a more compatible and comparable higher education. The origins can be found in 1998, with the signing of the Sorbonne Declaration, followed by the Bologna Declaration in 1999. Both are aimed at harmonising the higher education systems of the countries that signed the declarations. The latter initiated the start of the Bologna Process. The EU is one of the leading members in the Bologna Process and actively supports and promotes the goals of the Bologna Declaration. It supports with expertise or with organising events to share best practices. It doesn’t provide financial support, these expenses on higher education are done by the countries themselves. The following paragraph will focus on the different European Institutions, their objectives and activities relating to higher education.
The European Parliament (EP) focuses on the objectives of the treaties and increases its own influence on the decision-making process in the higher education policy field (Franke 2017). The EP does the following:
stimulates cooperation between the Member States, actively strengthens the European dimension,
consistently tries to increase the budget for programmes for the higher education, help develop partnerships between higher education institutions (HEIs) and businesses, insist on the Member States spending 2% of their GDP to higher education,
Discuss the implementation of the Bologna Process by the Member States,
The ministers in the Council of Europe also use the Open Method of Coordination. The Council of Europe has an overseeing committee called the Steering Committee for Higher Education and Research (CDESR)3. This committee is not intergovernmentally organised, but is organised that representatives of ministries and academic communities, networks of organizations are all involved. It works on different projects related to higher education. Its main
23 activities focus on: Policies and instruments for the recognition of qualifications, The European Higher Education Area, Academic Freedom and University Autonomy, Targeted Cooperation Activities. It does this by organising conventions, assisting policy-makers, advice and assist Member States.
The European Commission has several tasks that are aligned with its strategy and goals. These tasks consist of: support policy-makers in developing higher education policies for the EU countries, develop support tools and spending instruments to achieve the set goals, provide support to the Bologna Process, promote higher education reform, establish a European Higher Education Area, promote exchange of good policy practices between the different Member States, support the implementation of the EU agenda, uncover issues within the higher
education and make country-specific recommendations. In order to accomplish this, the EC uses the work method called the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). The European commission also had a central leading role in supporting countries to implement the Bologna policy process and EHEA also involved countries outside the EU countries. This means that the EC works together with the Member States in the form of Working Groups in order to share best policy practices, tackle the hurdles to achieve the set goals of higher education and work together to develop policies that achieve the set goals. This is most notable when looking at the content of the Communiqué’s of 2005 and 2007, where both times the EC has explicitly been asked by the ministers of Education to assist:
“We underline the importance of ensuring complementarity between the overarching framework for the EHEA and the proposed broader framework for qualifications for lifelong learning encompassing general education as well as vocational education and training as now being developed within the European Union as well as among participating countries. We ask the European
Commission fully to consult all parties to the Bologna Process as work progresses” (Bergen Communiqué 2005, p. 2).
“Data collection
3.4 We recognise the need to improve the availability of data on both mobility and the social dimension across all the countries participating in the Bologna Process. We therefore ask the European Commission (Eurostat), in conjunction with Eurostudent, to develop comparable and reliable indicators and data to measure progress towards the overall objective for the social dimension and student and staff mobility in all Bologna countries. Data in this field should cover participative
24 equity in higher education as well as employability for graduates. This task should
be carried out in conjunction with BFUG and a report should be submitted to our 2009 Ministerial conference” (London Communiqué 2007, p. 6)
In both examples the EC is actively involved in a supporting manner. The first example asks for consultation and the second for assisting in research. Both examples showcase that the EC is actively being involved in the Communiqué’s as well as in between each ministerial congress to support in the implementation as in finding data for recommendations.
Other European independent legal bodies contribute to the same cause as separate independent advisory or assisting organizations. These separate EU and non-EU institutions are: The High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education4
(HCERES), the Research and Higher Education Monitoring and Analysis Centre5
(MOSTA), the Ministry of National Education, Higher Education and Research6, the Higher Education Authority7(HEA) and the Council of Higher Education8. Their tasks are: assist in organising events, provide evaluation reports on the quality of higher education, funding and finance, assist the implementation of Member States or other EU bodies, provide
recommendations and policy advices, prepare suggestions and plans, implement policies, and develop national strategies.
Chapter 5.1.2 The Bologna Process and the European Higher Education Area
The Bologna Process started with the Bologna Declaration in 1999. The general principles were inspired by the Sorbonne Declaration in 1998 and it paved the way to creating the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The countries signing the Bologna treaty have undertaken the voluntary processes to pursue the set goals, which will be described in more detail in section 5.3.1., promoting European cooperation and dimension in quality assurance, development of mobility schemes and interinstitutional cooperation. It also urged the European governments to fit their national higher education into the broader context of Europe (Bologna Declaration 1999; Prague Communiqué 2001). The reforms have the aim of building a common framework and common tools to achieve the set goals. In addition, every two years the policies are agreed upon 4 https://rio.jrc.ec.europa.eu/en/organisations/high-council-evaluation-research-and-higher-education-hceres 5http://mosta.lt/en/about-us/about-us 6 https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/regional-innovation-monitor/organisation/ministry-national-education-and-research-technological-development-and-innovation 7https://rio.jrc.ec.europa.eu/en/organisations/higher-education-authority 8https://rio.jrc.ec.europa.eu/en/organisations/council-higher-education-0
25 in a new official document called the Ministerial Communiqué. In these Communiqué´s, the Bologna Process is further developed, new countries are officially welcomed as members and the fundamentals of the European Higher Education Area are established.
The year 2010 started the existence of the European Higher Education Area (Budapest Declaration 2010). The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is an organization that consists of numerous EU and non-EU member states and focuses on fulfilling the goals of the Bologna Process. After every new Communiqué actions are taken in the form of seminars, work groups and projects. These actions, which involve all the members and partners, are meant to achieve specific goals, usually over a time period of 2 years. The EHEA works with three types of members9:
The full members. They are part of both the EHEA and the Bologna Follow-Up Group (BFUG). The BFUG was set up to form an executive structure supporting the Bologna Process in between the Ministerial Conferences. The EC is also a full member. All full members are tasked with: preparing the Ministerial Conferences, policy
forums; overseeing the Bologna Process between the Ministerial Conferences and taking forward matters that do not need to be decided by the Ministers or that have been
delegated by the Ministers. These members vote on the content of the higher education policies and goals and set up working groups, meetings, conventions and reports dealing with specific topics. The system shows a dynamic between the Work Groups and full members, which shows that the full members receive input from the Bologna Seminars and report back to the full members.
Consultative Members. These non-voting members are stakeholder organisations and institutions that are involved in the implementation part of the Bologna Process. They wish to be associated with the Bologna Process, advice the BFUG since 2005 and can be invited to events when their expertise is requested. The following organisations are consultative members: Council of Europe, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organization (UNESCO), European University Association (EUA), European Association of Institutions of Higher Education (EURASHE), European Students’ Union (ESU), European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), Education International (EI), BUSINESS EUROPE, Education International (EI-IE) and External Quality Assurance Results (EQAR).
9 For more information on the members themselves:
full members: http://www.ehea.info/pid34250/members.html
Consultative members: http://www.ehea.info/pid34251/consultative-members.html Partners: http://www.ehea.info/pid34253/partners.html
26 Partners. These organizations also wish to be associated with the Bologna
Process, but do not meet the requirements to become a Consultative member. They serve the same purpose as the Consultative Members. The partner members are: the European Association for International Education (EAIE), the Council of European professional and managerial staff (Eurocadres), Eurodoc, the European Association for Promotion of Science and Technology (Euroscience), Eurostat, Eurostudent, and Eurydice.
The last organisational body to mention that forms one of the fundamental parts of the Bologna Process is the Bologna Follow-Up Group Secretariat. The people for the BFUG Secretariat are provided by the members of the Bologna Process. Their main roles are providing
administrative and operational support for the BFUG, act as external and internal contact points for the EHEA and prepare the Ministerial Conferences.
Chapter 5.2. Analysis Part B: the trends within the process
Chapter 5.2.1. The starting points
Ever since the beginning of the European dimension for the higher education field, the EU has had a supporting role. Starting with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and the Sorbonne and
Bologna declarations in 1998 and 1999 respectively, the EU started with a supporting role while the dominant political actors were the Member States. The subsidiarity principle of the EU did not change and the Member States decided the education policy on a national level. With the arrival of this European dimension, a voluntary trend has started from the Member States (and countries outside the EU) to form a more harmonised and comparable higher education system, while still taking into consideration the different cultural diversity between themselves. In
addition, transnational cooperation between HEIs has been stimulated and the representatives have taken actions to remove national blockades that hinder the transnational cooperation. This cooperation takes also form in the organisation of the Bologna Process. New members keep being added over the years and even non-members are able to give input to the process. This is aligned with the promise of countries to involve other stakeholders, like students, teachers, HEIs and businesses, more in the governance of higher education. Mainly, this could be achieved due to the setup of the Bologna Process and especially due to the Bologna Follow-up Group. One of their main roles is overseeing the processes between the Ministerial Conferences and
27 organising meetings to incorporate all the other stakeholders previously mentioned, which helps fulfilling the promise.
All in all, it can be concluded that the EU's roles in the higher education area were mainly supporting and overseeing roles since the establishment of Bologna. This goes for all the
different EU bodies and their responsibilities, which focused on providing assistance to the members and give a general direction on what the national policies should consist of. However in the end, the Member States decide the precise content of their higher education policies on a national level. The EU has managed to support and promote the European best policy
practices and show a leading role in this regard throughout the process.
Chapter 5.2.2. The trends of the process
So if the European Union had a supporting role, what were the changes within this supporting roles? While setting up the Bologna Process, questions were raised on how to govern the process and involve all the different stake holders and member. This set the trend on deciding on what the content of higher education policies will be and how to organise a policy area for higher education, which came to be the European Higher Education Area in 2010. The process as is described above basically never changed. The ideas at the starting point of the Bologna Process were further developed and institutionalised in the European Higher Education Area (Prague Communiqué 2001; Berlin Communiqué 2003; Bergen Communiqué 2005; London Communiqué 2007; Leuven Communiqué 2009; Bucharest Communiqué 2012; Yerevan Communiqué 2015; Budapest Declaration 2010).
The main point was to use the Open Method of Coordination and include all involved parties within the higher education systems (Prague Communiqué 2001; Berlin Communiqué 2003; Bergen Communiqué 2005; London Communiqué 2007; Leuven Communiqué 2009). Thus the three types of members were developed (described in section 5.1.2.) in order to involve all the parties. The meetings of BFUG were chaired by both an member and a non EU-member. The two countries that were Chairs of the meetings rotated every half year. The central aspect of deciding the developments and commitments of the member, was done at every Ministerial Conference by the ministers of the countries.
It is very important to note, that the use of the Open Method of Coordination never changed over the years. In the Communiqué's there is an acknowledgement of the economic and financial crisis affecting the Member States (Leuven Communiqué 2009, p. 1). This was however not used to change the process as it was. The changes connected to the content of the policies as a result of the crisis will be described in section 5.3.1. Lastly, it should be stressed
28 that the driving force behind changes in the field of higher education was the voluntary wish of cooperation between countries and HEIs themselves, to tackle challenges in the world of higher education. While reforms in the HEIs in each country did take place, it only further enhanced the cooperation between all the different stakeholders. From all the official documents the driving force behind changes in the field of higher education, was the voluntary wish of cooperation between the countries to tackle the reforms in the world of higher education.
Chapter 5.3. Analysis Part C: the content and expenditure
Chapter 5.3.1. The initial objectives and towards the EHEA
The Bologna Declaration of 1999 had 6 primary objectives for the higher education systems between the countries. These objectives were set up to stimulate the development of education and educational cooperation, compatibility and comparability. The six primary objectives were:
Easily readable and comparable degrees.
Two main cycles, that of undergraduate and graduate in the education system. Establishing a system of credit.
Mobility, not only for students, but also for teachers, researchers and administrative staff.
The promotion of European cooperation in quality assurance. The promotion of the European dimensions in higher education.
These primary objectives were further defined and elaborated with each Ministerial Conference (Prague Communiqué 2001; Berlin Communiqué 2003; Bergen Communiqué 2005; London Communiqué 2007; Leuven Communiqué 2009; Bucharest Communiqué 2012; Yerevan Communiqué 2015). The ministers would inform each other on the progress of the
implementation of the past agreements and the new objectives were decided. The same six objectives were discussed at every convention and when deemed necessary additional actions would be put on the Communiqué's. One important additional action kept returning with each Communiqué, which was stocktaking. Stocktaking refers to process in which the Bologna Follow-up Group prepare detailed reports on the progress of the participating countries. It will help better prepare for the following Ministerial Conference (Ibid.). Two other definitive additions to the Communiqué's were the lifelong learning and the Follow-up (Ibid.). The first refers to the opportunity for people to keep learning at higher education level at a later age. The second
