European degree structure and national reform: Constitutive dynamics of the Bologna Process

In the last decade, two types of cooperation in European higher education, to with the intergovernmental Bologna Process and the more supranational EU initiatives, seem to complement each other in the construction of a ‘single space’ of European higher education. The ministers responsible for higher education, taking part in the Bologna Process early in 2010 inaugurated the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). We will contend that this was mainly based on a generous reading of the ‘pays politique’ of regulations, while in the ‘pays réel’ (Neave, 2002) of higher education institutions, students and graduates the EHEA is still in the making. For this book, we look at the degree reforms in European higher education in the context of the Bologna Process. This initiative gave higher education cooperation in the European nation states a new face as from 1999. One of the main strategic objectives of the Bologna Process is to increase the compatibility–in more operational terms, similarity–of European higher education systems in general and national degree structures in particular in order to make the European Higher Education Area a space in which student and graduate mobility will be increased.