UNIMED, General Assembly 2019

1. The Higher Education World in 2030:
Themes and Priorities for Global Policy
Dialogue
Prof. Ann Katherine Isaacs
Vice Chair, Bologna Follow Up Group
Co-Chair, BFUG Coordination Group on Global Policy Dialogue
Rome, 12 December 2019

2. Our theme:
Connection:
the key to international understanding and
cooperation
Connection permits sharing of knowledge,
experience and points of view

3. The most powerful means for promoting international
understanding is ensuring that people are able to move, and
interact meaningfully with each other.
The dream: that learners are able to study where and what
they need and want to study, and that their studied will be
recognized.

4. This was the inspiration behind the Bologna Process, of
which we have just celebrated the 20th anniversary.
This was the origin of the EHEA, the European Higher
Education Area, today perhaps the largest and most
compact ‘higher education area’.
“Lowering barriers ... Creating pathways”

5. Insert image of current EHEA
48 countries, 8 consultative members, many partner organizations

6. At the beginning it
was much smaller,
and the way forward
had to be invented.
Bologna 1999:
29 signatories.

7. Today there are other several similar processes in
progress, to create Higher Education macroregions,
some very similar in aspirations to the EHEA.

8. The EHEA is the result of voluntary
intergovernmental agreements, and forms a ‘loose
framework’.
HEIs too, supported by the European Commission,
have introduced new methodologies and
cooperation on regional scale through, for example,
Tuning, which has now been carried out in 130
countries.

9. In the EHEA, we are now very busy reflecting on how to
move forward, in the coming 10 years and beyond. The
EHEA moves forward through its interministerial
conferences and the communiqués agreed by the Ministers,
every 2 or 3 years. In the intervals, the Bologna Follow Up
Group (BFUG) prepares the next Communiqué and its
Advisory, Working and Coordination Groups follow various
issues and prepare proposals for the future Communiqué;
which states what the 48 Ministers commit to do.

10. The Ministerial agreements have many strands.
First, complete implementation in all countries of the
‘Key’ and the ‘Core’ Commitments.
Key Commitments: Qualifications Frameworks and
ECTS; Lisbon Recognition Convention and Diploma
Supplement; Quality Assurance according to the ESG
[European Standards and Guidelines] for internal and
external – independent – quality enhancement and
assurance.

11. The Core commitments are:
“Social Dimension”
…Inclusion, Outreach
“Learning and Teaching”,
…including competence-based Student centered
learning and improved support of teachers.

12. And the future?
In our ‘vision’, we see:
increasing challenges to our fundamental values
rapidly increasing need for ‘flexibility’, variety of
learning styles, blended learning, small (short,
sometimes intensive) learning experiences,
workbased learning, etc.) in a lifelong learning context.

13. We foresee an increasing demand for non-traditional
learning, of open and distance learning, and a need to
be able to recognise units of learning achieved before
during and after study for a degree.

14. We need to be able to recognise, and document prior
learning of refugees and other learners from outside
the traditional framework.

15. Right now:
we are discussing the implementation of a new
‘object’:
the “microcredential”
...which will probably be included in some way in
the next Communiqué (Rome 2020)

16. We will need to adapt our existing tools (ECTS,
Qualifications Frameworks) for use in this new
scenario.

17. In Paris (June 2018), the Ministers mandated the BFUG
to create a Coordination Group to promote more
constant and meaningful Global Policy Dialogue, and
to prepare the first Bologna “Global Policy Forum” to
be held in conjunction with the next Ministerial
Conference, in Rome (June 2020).

18. To prepare this, we have written to the Ministers
responsible for HE in all world countries, and we have
organized two events in Rome to explain the purpose
of the Forum, and to ask for opinions on the most
meaningful topics to address together. We are now
preparing the invitations which will go to about 140
countries, and perhaps 100 international and macro-
regional organizations.

19. For now, the topics indicated are:
- Innovation, new skills and their link to employability
- New (digital) ways of learning and teaching in a lifelong
learning context
- Mobility of persons, minds and knowledge
- Untapped talent: opening up higher education and career
opportunities to refugees
- Inclusion as a driver for excellence
- Building trust in a global context

20. My own view:
The most important action area is to facilitate
contacts, mobility and reciprocal understanding by
describing, discussing and reciprocally referencing the
basic tools developed in each macro-region, country
or group of countries.

21. What are the basic building blocks?

22. Qualifications Frameworks with the specification of
level descriptors and volumes of learning;
Quality Assurance principles and transparent
practices;
Reciprocal recognition (we now have the UNESCO
Global Recognition Convention)

23. Understanding and agreement on how these blocks
are related to each other enables mobility and allows
each system to design in its own way its educational
offer.

24. There is much interest in so-called ‘automatic
recognition’, not easy to achieve.
The real challenge is to ensure that a learner who gains
not only access but also admittance to an institution in
another country will also be equipped to study
successfully there.
This requires developing different but compatible
curricula. This requires building trust

25. In this time of upheaval, of great challenges, the higher
education world must enhance collaboration and
cooperation, in view of giving a decisive contribution
to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
This is the theme we have chosen for the coming
Ministerial Conference, Bologna Global Policy Forum
and Global Summit.

27. Along with the Ministerial Conference and the Global
Policy Forum, on 26 June there will be a ‘Global
Summit’, where events can be organized by our global
partners, including UNIMED...on themes relating to
the development of higher education reform and
cooperation.

28. We hope that these events in June will form a real
milestone on the path toward higher education reform
and enhancement at global level.
We hope to be able, at long last, to recognize the many
countries and regions with which the EHEA and
European Universities cooperate to accede to a new
status, that of Bologna Global Dialogue Partner, a
member of the Bologna Global Community.

29. The exact terms of this new status must still be fine-
tuned, but the need is felt and it is accepted that no
country and no regione today can stand alone, that a
closer higher education community will benefit
everyone.

30. We hope to see you in Rome, to discuss and plan
how to address the new decade, up to 2030 and
beyond.

31. Thank you!
k.isaacs@unipi.it