NAS Blog

In this week’s Clarion Call, I write about the recent book The Challenge of Bologna, which argues that the European higher education reform process poses a serious challenge that the US needs to meet.

I don’t agree. This top-down “reform” initiative is mostly for the benefit of its participants (education ministers and numerous bureaucrats and consultants who want to look busy and productive) rather than something that will actually make higher education more effective. Moreover, the notion that European countries will somehow gain a big economic advantage over the U.S. as a result of tinkering with higher education is risible. Higher education has very little to do with national (or continental) economic performance, but its leaders speak and write as if it were the key ingredient — rather like the rooster who was certain that his crowing caused the sun to rise.

There is much that we can and should do to make higher education more efficient, but there’s nothing in The Bologna Process we need to copy.