U.S. Universities Seek to Adapt to European Advances

DAVIS, Calif. – A decade after Europe's universities started opening their doors to students from across the continent, U.S. institutions are still trying to figure out the effects on their side of the globe.

The Bologna Process, named after the Italian city in which it was created, allows students and professors to attend or work at universities in the 46 participating countries.

European leaders think the process will increase competitiveness and attract top international scholars.

Educators from around the world are gathering at the University of California Davis this week to learn more about the program. Among the most popular topics is whether the United States is benefiting from the Bologna Process – or falling behind Europe.

"If the Bologna Process ends up working, it will change the dynamics of international higher education dramatically," said Lloyd Armstrong, the former provost at the University of Southern California and a higher-education scholar. "We will, in many ways, be the odd man out."

With more European students receiving college degrees in recent years, the biggest question in the United States has been how to deal with Europeans applying to graduate school at U.S. universities.

In several European countries, an undergraduate education takes only three years, which has concerned some U.S. admissions officers, who wonder how to compare the shorter time frame to four-year degrees.

Although the Bologna Process initially worried admissions directors, it has helped U.S. educators better understand how higher education works around the world, said Peggy Blumenthal, chief operating officer for the Institute for International Education.

"While (Bologna) originally sounded like a threat, now it's stimulating innovation" around the world, she said.

Different countries and the universities in those countries – still have varying levels of quality, but U.S. institutions have come to understand that European students are better prepared for college than American students by the time they finish high school, Blumenthal said.

The increasingly competitive European institutions have become major players for top U.S. professors, particularly foreign-born instructors.

At the University of California Berkeley, for example, some departments have tried to fend off hiring "raids" from a prominent Swiss university.

However, top professors and graduate students are always going to be attracted to the United States, said Linda Tobash, director of university placement for the Institute for International Education, a New York-based organization. And fighting for those people will only help, she said.

"We thrive on competition," she said. "And competition breeds cooperation, which is a good thing."

The key for the United States, Armstrong said, will be improving its universities as the rest of the world does. China, India, Australia and South America all have made higher-education advances in recent years, he said.

It is hard to tell how the Bologna Process will affect the United States in the long run, Armstrong said.

"I absolutely view the Bologna Process as an experiment," he said. "I'm not fully convinced it can work."