Higher Education in Europe on the Threshold of the 21st Century

Since the middle of the 1990s, Europe has laid a foundation with the so-called Bologna Process that enables a comparison of educational systems in Europe and the rest of the world. The tools for doing that are offered in the Bologna Process. A starting point of the ‘Bologna Process’ was a ‘strong heterogeneity of the national education systems, which were perceived more and more as an obstacle for the wished-for mobility of students and research staff ’ (Keller, 2004).

Before the Bologna Declaration in June 1999 came the Sorbonne Declaration (‘Joint Declaration on Harmonisation of the Architecture of the European Higher Education System’)1 on 25 May 1998. This was passed, on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of the foundation of the Sorbonne University, by the Ministers of higher education of the big four in Europe: France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy.