The national systems of higher education in Britain and France before and after the implementation of the Bologna process

Abstract

Recently the European Higher education systems and their governance have undergone considerable changes. Domestic Higher Education institutions have been subjected to competing visions of how Higher Education systems and their institutions should be governed. The shift to so called soft governance mechanisms at the European level was unleashed and intensified by the Bologna and to some degree by the Lisbon strategies. Also, both strategies prompted national governments to engage in proactive reforms. This article aims to provide a suggestive analysis of such changes in Higher Education governance in the two Western European countries: Great Britain and France. By focusing on the reform trajectories of Higher Education systems in both countries over the three past decades, the authors examine the interplay between governance mechanisms and historically embedded institutions of Higher Education, and ways of their survival or partial decline in the changed circumstances. Examining different types of public Higher Education institutions, the authors look upon the Bologna process as the policy area, which has not only reconfigured institutions of governance and reshaped the allocation of autonomy between the state and university management but also changed identity of both professorial and administrative bodies of Higher Education institutions. The analysis also focuses on relationship between the state and Higher Education institutions and patterns of governance within universities before and after the Bologna reforms. The mentioned features provide the basis for complex understanding of national peculiarities and uniqueness of Higher Education systems.