The future of knowledge

Despite some critical aspects, the “Bologna Process” represents “a useful process” and “an intelligent attempt to re-endow universities not only with a task of cultural planning, but also with a dynamic and active role in the transformation of society”, says Monsignor Vincenzo Zani, Under-Secretary of the Holy See’s Congregation for Catholic Education. Writing in the last number of the Rivista del Clero Italiano (pastoral-theological journal of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart), Zani reviews the process, linked to the “joint declaration of intent” signed in Bologna in 1999 and aimed at the creation of a European area of higher education (EHEA). History. There has been a growing conviction in Europe in recent decades “that the future of the European Union cannot be founded solely on economic aspects, but must necessarily come to terms with the cultural, social and technological developments taking place in the world”. This, explains Msgr. Zani, has given rise to the need “drastically to re-think the educational processes to be offered to the new generations”. In particular, there is a need to “extend higher education”, promote further education, and make the education already acquired less obsolete”. The ministers of education and research of Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy launched an appeal for “a European system of higher education” at the Sorbonne in 1998. The appeal was endorsed not only by the then 15 member states of the EU, but also by 14 other countries. The result was that the representatives of 29 states signed a specific “Declaration of Intent” in Bologna in the following year. The Lisbon Council. The main objective, explains Msgr. Zani, was “to achieve this European Higher Education Area by 2010 and to promote it throughout the world”. The project, he explains, is “not isolated”: it was “prepared” in the years since the signing of the “Magna Charta Universitatum” (Bologna 1988) and since the Lisbon Convention (1997). Later, and particularly strategic, was the “extraordinary meeting of the European Council in Lisbon in 2000”, during which a particular objective was formulated: namely, the achievement by 2010 of turning the EU into “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, able to achieve sustainable economic growth” and “greater social cohesion”. Objectives. “Adoption of a system of university qualifications that is easy to understand and compare, and of an academic system based on two cycles, to which a third cycle for research was later added; introduction of a new system of university credits (ECTS) that would facilitate the mobility of students throughout the world; promotion of the mobility of students, teachers and researchers, and of European cooperation in quality control”: these, summed up Msgr. Zani, are the main aims of the process to which other states have signed up over the years, including the Holy See: the overall number of participating nations has now reached 46.Challenges. “This model – in the judgement of Msgr. Zani – must respond to two new challenges: first, that of mass university education, i.e. the need for higher education to be spread as widely as possible” in a society of globalized knowledge; and second, “that of the continuous development and differentiation of the professional skills and types of work that society requires” in a context in which “knowledge and information are destined to become ever more rapidly obsolete”. It is therefore all the more important to “foster in students a capacity to learn, to relate to others, to be creative and to increase the spirit of enterprise”. But it is also essential to respond to the “fragmentation of knowledge, inevitable consequence of the specialization of the sciences and of research”. These are challenges “of extreme complexity” – comments Zani – which, on the one hand, require a ‘theoretical’ solution (a new way of understanding the world of knowledge)” and, on the other, “a practical and organizational solution (a new system of studies and structural reforms)”. A difficult balance. “Analysing the university systems of some European countries – observes Msgr. Zani – this difficult balance now seems insidiously threatened by the intrusion of accountancy considerations”. In the work begun, in fact, one may note “the major importance given to the economic factor, also as a criterion for determining policies and quality level; the application of the principle of competition; and the emphasis on scientific and technological knowledge”. For some, in short, concludes Msgr. Zani, the “Bologna Process” could also represent “a gigantic bureaucratic machine that could suffocate” universities and, in particular, “the specific vocation and mission of the ecclesiastical and Catholic universities, yet without any discernable prospect of achieving the positive effects that this process could produce”.