Introduction
More often than not, notions such as a ‘European model of higher education’, or Bologna ‘principles’ or ‘values’ are used in the debates on European higher education policy. But is there such a thing as a shared understanding of the ‘European model of higher education’? And what are those supposed Bologna or European ‘principles’?
These notions do play a role—they are in a way constitutive of a sector identity. In a context of globalisation and marketisation of higher education, it is indeed easily understandable why it is important to brandish these ‘principles’ and ‘model’. Nonetheless, further examination of the use of these notions shows without difficulty how fluctuant their contours and definitions can be. In the public debate, the ‘European model’ is, for instance, many times used to point out an opposition to the (imaginary) ‘American higher education model’, but it is almost never defined in its own right. As for the ‘Bologna principles’, they are largely referred to, but what is behind them remains somehow hazy, as alternatively evoking the 1999 Bologna objectives for policy coordination, the great objectives of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) (employability, mobility and attractiveness), the Lisbon objectives of building a competitive Europe of knowledge, the specific working culture of this unusual European process (enhancing informality and voluntary participation), or the values of European higher education institutions.
Research on European higher education policy has greatly contributed to making sense of this fluctuant model and principles. Different works have highlighted the ‘polysemy’, ‘malleability’ and ‘ambiguity’ of these policy developments (Corbett, 2011; Keeling, 2006; Ravinet, 2014; Zgaga, 2012). This perspective has, for instance, been important to better understand the rapid crystallisation of the Bologna process: actors with diverging visions were able to gather around ambivalent objectives precisely because they could interpret them according to their own vision and strategies. The focus on malleability was very helpful as well in accounting for the varieties of the reforms taken in the name of Bologna (different works acknowledged how with ambiguous and/or vague initial objectives, there has been ample room for interpretation, which partly explains why domestic implementation and usages of Bologna have been so diverse) (Sin, Veiga, & Amaral, 2016). Yet, by emphasising the malleability of European higher education principles as a key explanatory feature, these works have also fallen short of questioning the bigger picture: Whereas the ‘model’ and the ‘principles’ are always put forward in the debate over European higher education, why is there so much ideational malleability and ambiguity in the story? What about agreed and shared explicit principles? Are there really any? If so, where do they come from?
These questions have both theory and policy relevance. Theoretically, it seems necessary to raise conceptual propositions for analysing the normative foundations of European higher education policy and go beyond the observation of ambiguity mechanisms. But the normative uncertainty of European higher education policy is not only a challenge for researchers. This, of course, also has crucial policy implications. While the Bologna Process will be 20 years old in 2018, it is time for policy makers to ask, beyond monitoring the implementation of technical objectives, where European HE policy is going, relying upon which principles and defining which new goals for the future.
In this chapter, our objective is to provide a comprehensive framework to answer the question ‘What are the European higher education policy principles?’. Following a first section giving preliminary definitions and details on the method, the second section presents European higher education principles as derived from European general principles. The third section interprets them as embedded in principles and values of the (European) University and proposes to define European higher education as a normative space at the intersection between two normative spaces: ‘Europe’ and ‘University’.
Puzzle and Preliminary Definitions
For a start, and before we consider and cross different perspectives to answer the question ‘What are the European higher education policy principles?’ it is extremely important to characterise what we are talking about and to give precise definitions.
The reflection presented here is first of all one about principles. The etymology of the word (properly meaning ‘what comes first’), as well as its common sense (general law or basic position) refers to a form of rule that is not supposed to vary. In our case, and as mentioned above, we are dealing with varying or at least not stable explicit ‘principles’. Our interest is in the connection the notion makes between rule and action. One dimension of it is legal, but our understanding of the category of principle is not strictly legal. It is rather an extensive social science definition: principles are here taken as more or less explicitly agreed reference points for action, which encompass legal principles (dominant) policy paradigms and underlying values.
Following this definition of principles, by European higher education policy principles, we refer to the agreed reference points for action of European level higher education policy developments (EU initiatives in the field of higher education and EHEA policy developments). This may include legal provisions, policy paradigms, and underlying values. In this chapter, we argue that these European higher education policy principles are shaped both by ‘European principles’ on the one hand, and by ‘the University principles’ and values on the other hand. Within the category of European principles, we understand ‘European fundamental principles’ (as legally defined in the EU treaties), as well as driving principles of the European project at a given period (e.g., the Lisbon strategy or the ‘Europe 2020’ strategy bear a formulation of the European project relying upon principles). We will examine to which extent European higher education policy principles can be derived from European principles in section “Puzzle and Preliminary Definitions”. But European higher education policy principles are also shaped by another ideational universe that provides distinct reference points for action: the University principles, which are also important to take into consideration. The principles and values of the University as a social institution (as stated for instance in the Magna Charta 1988) are equally constitutive of the European higher education/university principles. This is what we will focus on in the third section. We will conclude with a proposition to define European higher education as an intersecting normative space, i.e., at the intersection between Europe as a normative space and the University as a normative space.
‘Normative space’ is therefore a key notion in this chapter. In accordance with a long tradition of analysing public policies through an ideational perspective, we assume that the principles guiding a given policy sector are not floating freely. Rather, we state that they are anchored to a normative space of reference. If we accept that for a given policy there may be more than one space of reference, then the characterisation of the different normative spaces is crucial in order to analyse how policy principles are formulated, how they might be conflicting with one another, how they resist change or evolve over time.
In terms of method, this chapter will not include direct and systematic analysis of a substantial empirical material collected for the purpose of this study. It mostly consists of a theoretical proposition based upon secondary analysis. The ambition of this chapter is to rephrase the debate on European higher education principles.
From European General Principles to European Higher Education Policy Principles
A first approach to answer the question ‘What are European higher education policy principles?’ is to consider whether they are derived from some more general European principles: here, Europe is both what comes first and what is above. Phrased in the wording chosen for this chapter, here the normative space of reference is Europe, and we should therefore expect European higher education policy principles to be shaped primarily by their European nature. These general European principles might be understood as legal principles or as non-legal policy principles driving the European project. We will consider these two perspectives successively.
Legal Perspective
As already stated dozens of times in works on European higher education policy, there are only very few legal provisions specific to (higher) education in the treaties. Although the idea of a European cooperation in the field is as old as the project of a European community itself (Corbett, 20...