The international dimension and partnership questions
The creation of a wide range of links and partnerships and joint courses, with institutions inside and outside the UK, which may or may not be universities is a growing area of potential disputes.
Charters of chartered universities make provision for arrangements which allow the University to enter into partnership and other arrangements with other institutions. Similar options are open to universities which are statutory corporations and to Oxford and Cambridge. The limits of the exercise of this freedom to form links and partnerships are actively being tested at present and a good deal of experimentation is taking place at the edges of what is allowed. HEIs would be wise to be careful to ensure that they have thought through the implications of any agreements they enter into affecting students or researchers.
Particular problem-areas already apparent concern:
Ensuring that students coming to the UK can have confidence in the accreditation of providers of courses. www.dfes.gov.uk/providersregister/
Ensuring that there is clarity about credits and their transferability into other courses in the UK and overseas. www.europeunit.ac.uk/bologna_process/uk_position_on_credit.cfm
Ensuring that students can have confidence in the recognition of the qualifications they are seeking to obtain. www.europeunit.ac.uk/bologna_process/uk_position_on_recognition.cfm
The Bologna process
'The Bologna Process is an intergovernmental initiative which aims to create a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by 2010 and to promote the European system of higher education worldwide. It now has 45 signatory countries and it is conducted outside the formal decision-making framework of the European Union. Decision-making within the Process rests on the consent of all the participating countries.
It was launched in 1999 when Ministers from 29 European countries, including the UK, met in Bologna and signed a declaration establishing what was necessary to create a EHEA by the end of the decade. The broad objectives of the Bologna Process became:
- to remove the obstacles to student mobility across Europe;
- to enhance the attractiveness of European higher education worldwide;
- to establish a common structure of higher education systems across Europe, and;
- for this common structure to be based on two main cycles, undergraduate and graduate.
www.europeunit.ac.uk/bologna_process/index.cfm
www.dfes.gov.uk/bologna/
www.europeunit.ac.uk/bologna_process/uk_position_on_qualification_length.cfm
www.europeunit.ac.uk/bologna_process/uk_position_on_qualifications_framework.cfm
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmeduski/205/20502.htm