{"id":551,"date":"2012-12-02T12:38:49","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T10:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=551"},"modified":"2012-12-02T12:38:49","modified_gmt":"2012-12-02T10:38:49","slug":"bologna-well-applied-what-was-not-taken-into-account-years-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2012\/12\/02\/bologna-well-applied-what-was-not-taken-into-account-years-back\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018BOLOGNA WELL APPLIED\u2019: WHAT WAS NOT TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT YEARS BACK <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of our students is spending her Erasmus year abroad in Dublin. She visits me during her reading week break and when I ask her what\u2019s it like there, she tells me it\u2019s \u201cBologna well applied.\u201d I smile at her candid verdict, cringing inwardly, and ask her what she means.<\/p>\n

Well, this year she\u2019s being educated in the usual British-style higher education method, which the Irish seem to have imported: lectures for 100 to 300 students, group seminars with up to 20 undergrads and tutorials for around 8. I ask her to consider how to apply this, for instance, to our first-year \u201820th Century English Literature\u2019 class: 1 lecturer could cover the 210 students registered (plus 30 repeaters), but we\u2019d need to split students, not counting repeaters, into 10 seminar groups, and 26 tutorial groups. Instead, we make do with 3 teachers (lecturers + TA, all combined), running classes of around 70 students, with perhaps up to 20% abandonment rate. No surprise, as we cannot give all undergrads the personalised attention they require.<\/p>\n

The Bologna Declaration was signed, back in 1999, to back up the creation of a European Higher Education Area, based on the twin ideas of a common credit transfer system and a double-cycle system of education (ideally, a 3-year BA followed by a 2-year MA). 29 countries signed up, with 47 now on board. Absurdly, the MA degrees were first introduced in 2006, followed by the BA degrees in 2008. Things have been so badly organized that in this short time we have already have to reorganise the MAs. We used to have two: one for language, one for Literature; now we have a single one with two itineraries, constantly on the brink on being cancelled by the local Government for lack of students. This is no wonder in a system which first introduced the MA, as our first class of BA graduates, to whom the MA should have been addressed originally, is finishing this year.<\/p>\n

Then, there\u2019s the \u2018little\u2019 matter of local cultural traditions. In Spain we used to have a 5-year \u2018Licenciatura\u2019 system, split into a first cycle (3 years, based on compulsory subjects) and a second cycle (2 years, based on elective subjects). We dismantled this around 1999 to introduce shorter 4-year \u2018Licenciaturas\u2019 in 2002, I think, that, anyway, most students took 5 years to complete. Then came the 4-year \u2018Grados\u2019 which were the result of the pressures exerted by small provincial universities, afraid of losing all MA students to bigger universities after a 3-year BA. The result? It\u2019s a mighty mess when it comes to Erasmus exchanges, and does not contribute at all to building a homogeneous European space. Now, I\u2019m told, we\u2019ll soon introduce, finally!, a 3-year BA followed by a 2-year MA: in short, the old \u2018Licenciatura\u2019 but with separate degrees and prices for each part. Well, not quite the old \u2018Licenciatura\u2019 as in the meantime secondary education has been, um, \u2018destroyed\u2019 would be the right word.<\/p>\n

In contrast, though I\u2019m not very well informed, my guess is that Britain (and Ireland) have done nothing to adapt themselves to Bologna, as, well, Bologna was based, quite patronisingly, on what they did. Bologna well applied, indeed, but not in the sense my student meant. It\u2019s very frustrating to be told again and again by students spending their Erasmus year in Britain (and Ireland) that there they work very hard there, and read plenty. I do not doubt the capacity of my British (and Irish) colleagues but although I do support the good intentions of the Bologna declaration, either the accompanying practice of continuous assessment does not fit our university system or our university system does not fit the practice. For sheer lack of teaching resources.<\/p>\n

I would not go back to the system of lectures in gigantic classes with no contact whatsoever with teachers, followed by impersonal final exams that we used to suffer in the \u2018Licenciatura\u2019 but, clearly, we are surviving on the teachers\u2019 good will to make up for structural changes that never happened. It\u2019s like, if you allow me, the change to winter time at the end of October, which shortens daylight for one hour in the evening. I guess this is fine for Northern countries which shut up shop at 5, but with long days running until 8 for many people, I don\u2019t see what we\u2019re saving at all here in the South. <\/p>\n

This, I believe, has been overlooked just as local needs and problems were overlooked by this badly applied Bologna.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of our students is spending her Erasmus year abroad in Dublin. She visits me during her reading week break and when I ask her what\u2019s it like there, she tells me it\u2019s \u201cBologna well applied.\u201d I smile at her candid verdict, cringing inwardly, and ask her what she means. Well, this year she\u2019s being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-tools-and-rules"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}