Reception of the quality assurance commitments of the Bologna process in Finnish higher education institutions

Abstract

This article analyses Finnish higher education institutions' reception of the implementation of the new quality assurance systems that governments participating in the Bologna Process have committed to establishing in the Berlin Communiqué (2003). The data was collected using a websurvey, and the respondents were classified with a cluster analysis.The reception was more positive in the polytechnics than in the research universities, and women were more positive than men. People working in managerial positions were most positive about, and committed to, quality assurance. Most critical were young researchers in research universities working in temporary jobs. Some opinions were so strongly shared that respondents with short work experience expressed their opinions, even though they could not have personal experience of the topic in question. In some topics, respondents without personal experience, but having a critical attitude tended to give their opinion, whereas those with neutral attitude rather abstained from commenting.

An Overview of Trends and Challenges in Higher Education on the Worldwide Research Agenda

“…the Bologne process. In Europe, the phenomenon is under a new re-thinking (Leisyte, Zelvys, & Zenkiene, 2015;Ala-Vähälä, 2016), with more research on quality of higher education within increasing academic mobility environment (Baker, 2018;Morley et al, 2018;Siekierski et al, 2018). As the historic developments prove, the process initially aimed to support regional (mainly Eastern European) and small-scale universities in their aligning with the best European universities.…”