Glen Murray may be gone, but the allure of three-year bachelor’s degrees remains. In future, my guess is that they’ll be much like the German apprenticeship system – an educational deus ex machina that successive generations of Canadian politicians will “discover” anew every couple of years. So it’s probably worth asking, after roughly a decade of Bologna implementation, how Europeans themselves feel the whole experience is panning out. My own sense from talking to people across the continent is that, while no one thinks the three-year bachelor’s degrees are a failure, no one considers them a triumph, either.
For much of Europe, the adoption of a three-year bachelor’s degree was an act of division, not subtraction. That’s because in Germany, and most countries to its north and east, the pre-Bologna initial degree was not a 4-year bachelor’s but a 5- or even 6-year degree, equivalent to our master’s degree. The move to divide these degrees into a 3-year bachelor’s and a 2-year master’s seemed to make sense for three reasons: first, because governments were indeed looking for ways to reduce student time-to-completion; second, the creation of a new credential seemed like an opportunity to get universities to focus on a new type of student, who wanted less theory and more practice; and third, for those who were dubious about the first two reasons, there was an overriding desire not to get left behind in the creation of a single, pan-European Higher Education Area with harmonized degree-lengths.
On the demand side, it’s been a bigger-than-expected challenge to get students to take shorter programs. In Germany, for instance, 80-90% of bachelor’s graduates go on to get a master’s, because everyone assumes that this is what businesses will want. And they’re not wrong: in Finland, post-graduation employment rates for master’s grads is nearly 20 points higher than for bachelor’s grads (for university graduates, anyway – Polytechnic bachelor’s degree-holders do better).
It’s been no easier on the providers’ side. When you’re used to giving 6 years of instruction to someone before giving them a credential, it’s not super-obvious how to cope with doing something useful in half the time. In a number of cases, institutions left their five-year programs more or less unchanged, and just handed out a credential after three years (which makes at least some sense if 80-90% of people are going on anyway). Where compression has actually occurred, what tends to happen is that institutions elect to keep courses on technical, disciplinary skills, and get rid of pesky things like electives, and courses that help build transversal skills. The result is a set of much narrower, less flexible degrees than before.
At least part of the problem is that there hasn’t been a lot of progress in terms of finding ways to deliver both “soft skills” and technical skills in the same courses, which permit delivery of a more rounded curriculum without extending time-to-completion. But innovative curriculum planners are in short supply at the best of times; it’s the sort of thing that probably should have been considered before engaging in a continent-wide educational experiment like this.
All of which is to say: three-year degrees are not easy to design or deliver, and they don’t necessarily work in the labour market, either. Shorter completion times are good, but caveat emptor.
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And then again, in Australia 3 year degrees are the ‘norm’, leading to high graduate employment and successful progress to higher degrees.
Excellent point.
Greater part of europe has 3 years bachelor program compared to US’s 4 because in Europe, and under the french education system in particular, when one reaches the first year of college, he or she has accumulated 13 years of education from primary to high school to earn the high school diploma or the high school baccalaureate.
Compared to the US education system, when you step into college as a freshman, it is after you have completed 12 years of education from primary to high school, one year less than its french counterpart. And so when you look closer, by the time you graduate high school in europe or under the french system, you have the equivalent of a completed freshman education under your belt, which is why europe’s bachelor is designed for 3 years, and US for 4 years.
I am a prime example of that. I took an advanced math class in the US, and passed that class, despite the fact that i worked under tremendous persecution and difficult circumstances. But i also passed the class because i had a solid College Algebra education during my last year in high school. It was that solid foundation that helped me pass the advanced math class. you cannot pass a pre-calculus Math course in the US if you have not had a solid college algebra foundation in any setting.
So the difference lies in the 12 year general education in USA while 13 years in some European countries, and particularly in France.
Instead of looking to Europe, why not Quebec, where universities offer 90-credit Bachelor’s degrees to students who have completed two years of “pre-university” CEGEP (covering grades 12 and 13). CEGEP courses, by and large, tend not to be as rigorous as first-year university courses, nor do their programs necessarily dovetail neatly to university offerings.
And yet employers in Ontario and elsewhere don’t balk at a candidate with a Bachelor’s degree from McGill or Concordia.
Still a k-16 system, though, no?
As you pointed out in an earlier OTTSYD, the rising participation rate means that the students attending university are more heterogeneous. That has all sorts of implications for our teaching loads and academic support systems, but once you have admitted them, you have to do something with them. Three year degrees (actually 15 credit degrees – I don’t think many students complete them in three years) can provide the best alternative for completing a university credential for lots of students.