The Bologna process' impact on public and private schools

Thèmes abordés

The Bologna process, public and private schools, high fees, public good, public investment in education

Résumé du document

The Bologna process is a major reform created with the claimed goal of providing responses to issues such as the public responsibility for higher education. In our modern, globalized and complex societies, the challenge was tough.
First, we should define what a public good is and what a private good is.
The economist's traditional definition says that a public good is a good or service which is neither rivalrous in consumption nor excludable in ownership. This logically means that goods without those attributes are private.

Extraits

[...] Representative diagram Actually, public investment in education, calculated according to the PIB, decreased in most members' countries between 1995 and 2000. Moreover, the EU undergoes an underinvestment from the private sector, especially in higher education. In the United-States, the private involvement is fifth as high as in the EU. II - THEORIES Throughout the evolution of the educational system, protests have been made by economists. Some consider that education is now connected with competitiveness and trade and involves a reduction of the government responsibility while private contribution is increasing. This theory lies on neo-liberalism, i.e. [...]

[...] They claim that public education and knowledge are now run like business. The gap between the traditional, cultural public education and the contemporary competitive and economy-oriented private education is nowadays very controversial in every country. III - SOCIAL & FINANCIAL CHANGES Quality of education “Quality assurance in higher education is by no means only a European concern. All over the world there is an increasing interest in quality and standards, reflecting both the rapid growth of higher education and its cost to the public and the private purse.” This quote taken from the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (one of the close of the Bologna Process) can be criticized. [...]

[...] These reactions led to the failure of the constitutional change that prohibits the founding of private universities. Fees Who pay for higher education fees? What is the level of intervention of the public financing? Public schools are funded directly or indirectly by a public education authority while private schools are funded directly or indirectly by a nongovernmental organization. Higher education is mainly organized and financed by the public sector which takes in 70% of EU students. The private sector is almost always funded except in Cyprus, Poland, Portugal and Romania. [...]

[...] Moreover, it is undeniable that parents send their children to a private school only if they want to endow their children with an education of a much higher quality than what is provided by the public system. This implies that income inequality is the main determinant of the extent of segregation in the schooling system. I will argue that the public interest will best be served by attention to policies designed to assure the academic quality of all forms of higher education, whether public, private, or for-profit. [...]

[...] The implementation of the Bologna process created a lot of problems, one of the major being the introduction of very high tuition fees in public universities under the cover of the process. Some of these fees are extremely high, causing unrest among the student population. During the years 2006 2007, the Greek government led by New Democracy, tried to implement the declaration of Bologna through massive reforms aiming at the university system. These actions led to universities being taken over by the students, massive protests, police violence and riots. [...]