This book sets out to analyse and assess the Bologna Process which has been under development for two decades now. Those who signed the Bologna Declaration in 1999 all hoped that Europe’s cultural identity would be strengthened by their work in the higher education sector. They were also acutely aware that European universities needed to keep up with world-beating American universities; and they believed that they must try to retain their own best people within Europe rather than allowing them to float away in a brain drain to the USA.

The European Union (EU) was slow to address the harmonisation of higher education (HE) within its territory. It adopted the Open Method of Coordination in which the Council of Ministers agreed on very broad goals, but left it to the Member States to adapt those for their own national and regional purposes. The EU was fearful of causing alienation, and challenging too overtly the power that sovereign states exercised over their higher education systems. It aimed at eventual convergence, though it stopped short of integration. Even in its pursuit of convergence, it had to act strategically. Corbett (2005) shows that attempts to introduce European regulation into HE sometimes met with accusations that the EU was going beyond the letter of the law, and was using treaty procedures in domains to which they did not fully or properly apply. The EU pursued its ends in a surreptitious way by involving people in lower level pragmatic action (e.g. study visits and networking) rather than pushing its activities towards the highest legal level. After all, it was easier to implement the cross-national transfer of credit points than to raise aspirations towards a European vision (Pritchard, 2011).

Nevertheless, there was in fact a serious need for the Bologna Project on a practical level. The following real-life case study shows the pain and disadvantage that can be caused by non-recognition of HE qualifications when an individual moves from home territory to another EU country. It concerns a British national who has lived and worked in Hungary since 1988; she describes some of the difficulties that she experienced in obtaining recognition for her British doctorate in education in Hungary.¹

I had been working since 1994 as a senior lecturer in Teaching English to Speakers of Other languages (TESOL) at an institution of higher education in Hungary. According to Hungarian law (e.g., Act CCIV of 2011 On National Higher Education, section 28), all senior lecturers have to hold a PhD, therefore through the British Open University I completed a doctorate which was awarded in 2011. I needed to have my UK doctorate nostrified, that is, officially recognised as equivalent to a Hungarian PhD. This would both award me identical rights to a Hungarian PhD holder, and allow my Hungarian university to use my UK doctorate for policy purposes. For example, when applying for course accreditation from the Hungarian Accreditation Committee, the number of PhD holders of the institutional provider is taken into consideration.

In Hungary, PhDs are nostrified by a Hungarian institution of higher education that runs a similar doctoral programme to the discipline of the PhD/doctorate issued abroad. Therefore, I applied for recognition through a Hungarian university and submitted the relevant paperwork: a copy of my thesis, documentation, academic CV and list of publications. In 2012, I was informed that my application had been unsuccessful; that my UK doctorate was not recognised as equivalent to a Hungarian PhD. The underlying issue appeared to be that the requirements for completion of a doctoral degree in the UK and Hungary are different. I was awarded my UK doctorate on the quality of my research-based thesis. In Hungary, however, students must complete a range of academic activities which may include passing a PhD exam, holding two Hungarian-recognised foreign language certificates, publishing articles and completing a dissertation. In neighbouring Slovakia there is automatic recognition of PhDs from EU countries, and I had assumed that this applied throughout the EU; but such is not the case. In 2014, I was demoted from my position as senior lecturer to that of a foreign language teaching assistant. I could no longer work as a senior lecturer because I did not hold a Hungarian/Hungarian-recognised PhD.

This personal story shows that mutual recognition of qualifications is one of the more urgent demands that the EU faces and one, moreover, which it is uniquely well fitted to confront and resolve. The present volume has taken as its objective the comparison of twelve EU countries representing five regions of Europe. It reviews and assesses the extent to which the original goals of the EU Bologna Process have been achieved across those regions.² It considers the extent to which the following been achieved. Comparability between HE degrees? A system of two main degree cycles? Credit transfer and accumulation? International mobility? European co-operation in quality assurance? And at the highest level of all, has it been possible to promote a European dimension in higher education?

Richness is imparted to the book by the Leitmotive of three overarching Grand Discourses. These pervasive themes are Professional Bureaucracy, New Public Management and Public Value. In many ways, the important emerging dialogue over Public Value forms a moral counter-balance to the brutality and commercialism that can occasionally characterise the first two Discourses. Professional Bureaucracy may be exercised by prioritising form over substance at the expense of continuous quality improvement; formal compliance with the letter of the law may mask resistance to the spirit of the law. New Public Management (NPM) in some Central and East European countries may recall Soviet means of control, and lead participants to perceive NPM as little more than another unwelcome form of authoritarianism. By contrast, some other countries are much more consensual, and have consciously implemented “Bologna” on a Public Value basis.

The Bologna Process is profoundly influenced by national sovereignty, and even within countries much diversity may exist. The present book reveals something distinctive about each country or region that is represented within it. Their achievements in relation to Bologna are concisely presented in highly informative summary tables. In relation to the European higher education project, distinctiveness constitutes both strength and weakness. Diversity can be a strength in that it offers variety of situation and is an incentive for mobility of students and staff. After all, if there is no diversity, then there is little to excite the imagination and to expand one’s personal horizons through travel; so one might just as well stay at home thereby avoiding the expenditure of time and money that is inherent in mobility. But on the other hand, distinctiveness is the indispensable basis of identity and national pride; these are inimical to convergence and therefore ultimately to the European project which reveals itself to be full of structural tension. It is only when Bologna is successfully used as the basis of system change desired by national entities that consonance is achieved between diversity and convergence – for a while at least until new tensions emerge.

In the final chapter of the present book, the co-authors conclude that the national context seems to dominate the reform of HE systems within Europe, because it matters to many people more than the aspiration towards European cooperation. This situation in HE corresponds to EU developments at macro-economic level. The British Europhile politician, Sir Nick Clegg, discerns a schism in the Eurozone: some countries that share the single currency have moved ahead leaving the non-Eurozone countries behind. In this state of affairs, Clegg (2017) sees a final departure from the ideology of an ever-closer union and the rise of a new approach to membership of the EU based on differential integration. A new European concept will become necessary taking account of historical preferences, outlooks and traditions. The current volume provides a subtle, fine-grained analysis of such background in relation to the countries that it covers. It is an important tool for understanding one of the most ambitious projects that has existed in higher education for many decades. For this, and for its intrinsic interest, I commend it to the reader.