Professor Paul D. Ryan:

My task is to briefly review the international context of higher education reform. In Europe the reform process is known as the Bologna process. The Bologna process is not a treaty but an arrangement of European states which was aimed at creating a European higher education area by 2010, in which students could choose from a wide and transparent range of high quality courses and benefit from the smooth recognition procedures required for free movement of labour. Initially the three priorities of the process were to establish a standardised degree system for the familiar bachelor degree, masters and the doctorate which was not generally in use throughout Europe; to introduce quality assurance; and to develop the recognition of qualifications and periods of study. The Bologna declaration of 1999 was designed to make European students more mobile and to attract students and scholars from other continents. The higher education sector had been partially commercialised in other parts of the world such as in the USA which made profits or had a positive trade figure of $7 billion in 1996, whereas European higher education institutes were seen as serving national needs. For this reason, higher education was not initially included in the Treaty of Rome.

The process is managed by education Ministers who previously met every second year and now meet every three years. There are 47 signatory members - 45 countries and 47 Ministers of education - and although the process was to have been completed by 2010, it has now been extended to 2020. It was too ambitious to complete in the space of ten years, which is slightly longer than one degree cycle for a student from starting a bachelor degree to completing doctorate. Ministerial commitment to the process was restated in the Budapest-Vienna declaration. The Bologna process initially worked through the administrative structures at ministerial level and, in the Irish context, HEA level to develop higher education systems to meet the obligations imposed by the Lisbon recognition convention which states qualifications recognised in one member state shall be accepted fairly and without bias in others. It became obvious, however, that changes would also be needed at the level of institutes of higher education and in classrooms in terms of the interaction between academics and students. In response to this need, in Europe the Tuning project was started, with which I have been involved for 12 years. This project is offering advice on every major continent on the reform of higher education. The process that started with the aim of making Europe more competitive is now seen by our competitors as something to study. Simply put, the world is watching us.

Ireland has led the rest of Europe in the adoption of the Bologna reforms at all levels. We have every reason to be proud of our achievements in this regard. The recent establishment of Quality and Qualifications Ireland consolidates our statutory response to the process. In 2009 Ireland was ranked as one of only six of 47 members that had complied with the ten fundamental requirements of the Bologna process at excellent or very good level. Our national qualifications framework and system of quality assurance are accepted globally as examples of best practice. Of the seven people sent by Europe to advise Russia on the reform of its higher education system, two were Irish.

Similar, although less well publicised, changes are taking place at academic level. Our institutes and individual academics have not received good press on this, although perhaps it could be argued that is their fault. All of the universities and institutes of technology have established centres for excellence in teaching, learning and assessment. Degree programmes are routinely described in terms of student acquired competences, or the abilities developed by the student; staff assessed outcomes, or what a student demonstrates he or she has achieved; workloads defined in a systematic way; and a European credit transfer and accumulation system which relates internationally recognised credits to a defined body of work. These changes all conform to the Bologna process.

It is reasonable to ask why world rankings do not reflect our success in this process. However, as the European Universities Association notes, while the world rankings are meant to represent university quality, "it is difficult, if not impossible, to measure and quantify quality itself, and therefore rankings use various proxies – some of which are rather distant from the actual quality of teaching or research". For example, Shanghai University benefits from the bonus points awarded according to the number of Nobel laureates in the faculty. Europe recognises this problem and is developing a new multi-rank system, a prototype of which should become available next year. One's ranking gets depends on the questions one asks. The OECD is so concerned about the problem that it is developing an assessment of higher education learning outcomes, AHELO, which has been designed to determine how well an institute of higher education meets its stated aims. These are completely different measures of quality and excellence and I firmly believe Ireland should support them.

My experience with systems elsewhere in the world indicates that Ireland is in an excellent position to benefit from its progress on the Bologna process reforms not just in improving the mobility of graduates but also in making our training relevant to the needs of a rapidly changing knowledge based society and positioning us to make strategic international alliances in higher education.