Professor Paul D. Ryan:

I will answer Deputy McConalogue's question first. He asked why the process is taking 20 years rather than ten. People completely underestimated the size of the task they were taking on. The Bologna Declaration is slightly over two pages in length and now has 47 jurisdictions reforming the higher education system in a co-ordinated manner. This is a completely unknown experiment in European society and, therefore, we are learning as we go along.

Let me give a specific answer rather than a general one. The areas that have caused most difficulty in terms of the qualifications are the doctorate and the qualifications of regulated professions. The aspects that have caused problems in regard to the management of higher education are quality assurance, recognition of prior learning and the development of national qualifications frameworks. The latter two are inherently linked because if one is to recognise higher learning, one must place it on a framework; otherwise, recognition means nothing. Only approximately one third of the relevant countries in 2009 had those aspects developed. Approximately 60% had quality assurance, but it was extremely varied. We have a system that is internationally validated and that assesses the relevant unit on its fitness of purpose, be it in respect of research, teaching, teaching and research, administration, the library service or some other service.

Other countries have different systems. The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, ENQA, has a charter. It is in our interest to keep ourselves well-informed about this and where other nations fit within the system. It is essential that we try to achieve the best value for money. We want to ensure every other nation is subject to the same strictures in an open market.

I have outlined the organisational aspects. Let me return to the issue of the doctorate. Many countries around Europe had a five-year primary degree. Some took seven years to do five but there was a five-year primary degree. Theoretically, it was relatively easy to split that into a bachelor's degree and a master's degree, be it according to a three-plus-two model or a four-plus-one model.

At the end of five years, the student had his or her master's degree, but there was an exit point in the middle at which he or she obtained a bachelor's degree. The difficulty for these countries was in ensuring the exit point actually met the needs of their society, and this is where a great deal of the difficulty is now arising. In a country where employers are used to hiring people after five years of university, those who have completed only four years will be seen as knowing less. As such, some type of training programme might have to be agreed with the industry to make up the deficit. There is a great deal of work going on in this area and new ground is being broken all the time.

There are two specific issues in regard to doctorates. First is the balance between the two types of doctorate. In the case of the PhD, which is the philosophy doctorate, the criterion, putting it as simply as I can, is whether the research is innovative and publishable. The second qualification is the professional doctorate, which is common, for example, in the medical profession. In this case, students have not spent three years doing a unique piece of research but have otherwise obtained qualifications at that level of expertise. The difficulty arises in reconciling these two types of doctorates through national qualifications frameworks.

The second issue regarding doctorates relates to the employability of PhD graduates. Is a doctorate candidate training to be a blue sky researcher who will go on to work in a university? Is a PhD student training to become an important member of a knowledge-based society? These are the questions one must consider. Throughout Europe and even within Ireland there is a major debate - the Government has part-funded initiatives in this regard - on how we can ensure that every research-based PhD includes within it some element of training for life which will allow the student to move with relative ease from the research environment into, for instance, an industrial environment.

The final issue in all of this relates to the regulated professions, in respect of whom there is a difficulty that remains unresolved. The problem is that to have the competence to be a basic practitioner takes at least five years of academic training before one goes on to obtain whatever work experience is required. I am advising pharmacists on this issue at the moment and have been involved in discussions with representatives of other medical professions in Europe. These professions like the idea of a five-year initial qualification, but that is not compliant with the Bologna system. There is a difficulty in finding the exit point, after three or four years, where one is not qualified to be a pharmacist or a doctor, for example, but where one has obtained a qualification that is of value to society and will enable one to gain employment. The benefit of that type of system is that it gives both students and trainers more flexibility. There are probably always a certain number of people who would be better off exiting after three or four years. These are the main issues, as I see it, and I hope I have answered the Deputy's questions in that regard.

Before responding to the points raised by Senator Healy Eames, I would like to comment briefly on the notion of employability. One of the issues on which we have concentrated as part of the Tuning project is the question of separating the subject-specific competences a student will gain from his or her particular course of study from the generic competences every student should obtain. The idea behind generic competences is that there are skills which allow one to be a useful member of society. An example would be asking students to give a presentation so that they learn how to get the PowerPoint slides in the right order, have the right number of words on the slides, speak clearly and deliver the major points. These types of general competences are sought by employers. As part of the Tuning project, we have asked employers around the world about the generic competences they require - we have used the term transferable skills - in order to determine the abilities they are they looking for in potential employees. We expect to have compiled a data set next year comprising 69,000 responses from employers, which I will make available to the committee as soon as it is available. It may not be the most fabulous statistical survey ever, but 69,000 answers are certainly worth looking at. It will be a unique data set.

Senator Healy Eames asked how many students have had their qualification recognised. That is now routine and is normally done through university admissions offices or independently. I am not sure how it happens in the institute of technology sector, but it is done routinely. We have a national academic recognition information centre which provides guidelines on how to do it, particularly if one is dealing with qualifications in areas with which one might not be familiar. I am helping to write a document on this process for university enrolment officers on a European-wide basis, which will be published next year.

Regarding the Senator's question on the European credit transfer and accumulation system, ECTS, the answer is absolutely "Yes". One can take a properly organised, modularised course under the ECTS where the level of the ECTS credits and the workload is stated-----