Indeed, when starting a dialogue, we must first notice the presence of an opposite ("I see you"); in other words we must recognize the outsider's presence and difference. Acceptance of the other is a prerequisite for any real exchange. Imagine a conversation with your own double: it would soon peter out for lack of arguments. There would be even no point to start it—unless you like self-indulging monologues! Any assurance process thus begins by postulating the existence of some difference, i.e., a gap in being that makes the encounter worthwhile.

Should you wish to define the extent of that variance, you would need the other's willingness to engage in a process of discovery of his specificity vis-a-vis your own nature. Hence the importance of the "I am here to be seen," as it implies an opening to the other's gaze and queries, the acceptance of a search for a distinct identity. However, if the gap between our beings is to be explored to its limits, if we wish to be transparent to each other, there is also a need for shared references helping to bridge that gap, a need for accepted areas of common interest, some kind of common platform—not only in terms of rational explanations for, the more distant the positions, the more important becomes the trust making possible the weaving of varied situations into a compatible entity. Otherwise, difference would engulf commonality and break the conversation.

If this is true of two persons, it is also relevant for two institutions—or more. In the quality assurance business, we are all seeing each other, and we are all there to be seen by the others.

A. The European Context

The organizers asked me to look at the topic from an international perspective. As "I am here to be seen" as a European—in this case the main difference beyond the commonality of our basic conditions as university people—I will limit my international perspective to the 42 countries that have members in the Association of European Universities, from Russia to Portugal, from Iceland to Cyprus, including of course the fifteen members of the European Union at the core of the continent and of its integration.

The sample is good enough, as there are at least as many systems of higher education as there are nations that feel that they are stakeholders in the European culture. In fact, there are a few more, if you consider federal states like Germany or Switzerland—or countries that are slowly reorganising themselves along federal lines, like Spain or even Italy. Their systems are made of varied sub-systems, which often differ widely from one province to the other. Of course, there are commonalities of purpose or structure between some areas of the continent: the Humboldtian model of a university where research fertilizes teaching is still prevailing in German-speaking and Scandinavian countries, while the Anglo-Saxon model of a chartered independent institution typifies the British Isles; as for the Napoleonic model making the university a tool of national public service, it survives in different forms from France to Turkey, or in many countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

Over time, and since World War II, differentiation in each of these models has grown with the development of mass higher education: in the Netherlands and Belgium, this has meant setting up a dual offer of higher education, academic on one side, vocational on the other. More recently, countries like Finland, Norway, Austria, Hungary or the Czech Republic have moved the same way. Britain, on the contrary, subsumed its vibrant polytechnic sector, vocational in purpose, into the university world—doubling the number of academic institutions in a few years. Other countries kept a unitary approach to higher education, each university covering a full range of postsecondary activities in terms of learning. In Spain, Greece or Italy, larger and larger institutions diversified their offer, rather than spawning new and smaller universities like proved the case in France, Sweden or Turkey. Central and Eastern Europe inherited from a Soviet past a fragmented system of courses offered by many small and highly specialized schools, while research was kept aside under the responsibility of the National Academy of Sciences. Today, the trend is towards merging—for instance, in Hungary, where the government recently imposed a redistribution of higher education in just a few institutions.

If one moves from systems of institutions to the services provided, things vary considerably, a degree in law being taught in Germany in 5 to 7 years or, in France, in 4 to 5 years. In both these countries, there is no control at the entry as all students with a diploma from a secondary school are entitled to register in the university of their choice. In England, where there is a strict admission process, students first graduate when they are 22 or 23, whereas in Germany they usually leave higher education between 25 and 27 years of age. Here, classes are large, there they are small and pedagogy differs accordingly. In several countries, a first degree takes 4 to 5 years to obtain—corresponding to the level of an MA—and, until recently in Italy, the Laurea was the only degree awarded. Moreover, the division into disciplines—and the corresponding degrees—varies from a country or a system to another. In other words, students of different ages train in schools of different scope in fields of different importance on the basis of different intellectual inputs. Add to this that such training is done in more than 30 different languages with the support of as many diverging systems of grants or loans. No wonder that non-Europeans have difficulties piecing this all together—but the same is true of the Europeans themselves, all the more so as the national borders too often still limit intellectual mobility.

Then, what does unite institutions and systems of higher education in Europe? In general, higher education services are mainly provided by state institutions, which are supported by public money. Indeed, private higher education is still rare or very recent—except for traditional Catholic universities—for instance in countries where the government has difficulties to meet increased demand, like Portugal or, in Central and Eastern Europe, Romania, Hungary or Poland. Even there, however, the general consensus remains that higher education is a public service, the organization of which is the responsibility of the state: Governments are thus expected to ensure as equal an access as possible to all citizens able to benefit from academic training, be they in large cities or in underpopulated areas; consequently, they regulate provision, allow for teaching in specific areas of knowledge, control quality and pay for teachers or support staff—people who, in many countries, are enrolled as civil servants. In other words, European states all consider that they have a proactive and integrative part to play in higher education while European citizens consider that they pay for higher education as taxpayers rather than as customers. Hence the difficulty for impoverished governments to introduce fees or even legislation encouraging institutions to generate extra income by their own means. The central role of the state explains the global homogeneity of higher education in Europe as well as its practical fragmentation due to some 40 governments feeling rather jealous of their own prerogatives in university education: National borders are still difficult to cross for academic purposes. And that is true for students and for professors.

As a countervailing feature, there is the economic process of integration in the European Union: In a market of some 400 million people, when goods, individuals and services are free to move, intellectual training should also enjoy relaxed protection since citizens must be able to use their education in all member countries of the Union. Hence, the EU Commission and Parliament have been active in simplifying rules, in moving from degree equivalence to the recognition of qualifications or, at present, to the acceptance of learning outcomes; thus, the trend is towards the host country having to prove that the degree granted in another country, at least for three-year professional qualifications, is clearly lacking in comparison to the national scale of competencies. The other approach was to show in the daily reality of institutions that the presence of other Europeans in their classes was more of an advantage than a danger. ERASMUS—and its companion programmes like COMETT, LEONARDO or COMENIUS—started in the mid-'80s and have helped hundreds of thousands of students to join a course—for a term or two—in another country before coming home to take a degree. This encouraged institutions to discover how similar was their teaching beyond explicit differences: Apart from common national molds, universities also refer to shared traditions leading to common scientific references in most fields of learning. On that basis—made evident by mobile students—the European Commission helped create ECTS, a credit transfer system allowing to compare the workload of students when training in a specific field, even if using different languages. The success of the ERASMUS program has made EU programs most attractive in non-EU countries, in particular in the many Central and Eastern European states asking for membership in the Union. Brussels acts as a magnet inside and outside of the EU, thus stimulating the creation of platforms of convergence.

B. The Sorbonne and Bologna Declarations

Internationalization means that countries also recognize the need to see each other while accepting to be seen by others. Thus, in 1998, a few nations decided that their commonalities deserved strengthening into a multilateral effort of academic cooperation—an initiative for which they would take the lead rather than the European Commission. At the invitation of the French Minister of Education, his German, Italian and British colleagues met in Paris on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of the Sorbonne University: For two days in May, the four Ministers headed discussion groups and took part in panels with European academic leaders, union representatives, student delegates and prominent scientists (thus consulting the people directly involved in their sector of responsibility). They later signed a declaration calling for a common architecture of degrees in their four countries. The process was to remain open to other nations willing to join. Without saying it, the Ministers were recognizing the similarity of their power in higher education by committing themselves to converging reforms in their national system of higher education—in fact, they were referring to Anglo-Saxon structures of learning, the BA, the MA and the PhD as a potential tool of increasing commonality.

A year later, in June 1999, in Bologna, the Italian Minister of Education reciprocated the invitation but extended it to all European nations interested by complementary reform in their academic development. Thirty Ministers joined the meeting, from Romania to Portugal, from Sweden to Greece and, after a day of conversation with some 200 representatives of the higher education sector in Europe, they signed another declaration pledging themselves to the creation by 2010 of a common European space of higher education implying early reforms in specific areas of concern.

Those reforms would be launched under their national responsibility but would attempt to steer change into common developments: Each country was thus to work on introducing a two-tier structure in curricula, i.e., a first degree of at least three years, the BA, leading either to the labor market or to a second degree, the MA, in the next year or so. Thus, European students should be able to train and prepare for a PhD after a five-year period of earlier training at the university. This should entail easy comparison between learning experiences: hence the need for reinforcing the credit transfer system and for exploring its transformation into a European credit transfer and accumulation system. Credit transfer and accumulation also imply some kind of appreciation of learning: The Ministers thus indicated their intention to set up converging paths as far as evaluation and quality assessment was concerned. As a result, international mobility would increase further, a trend that could be reinforced by practical measures helping students and staff to cross borders without suffering disincentives such as bureaucratic delays and administrative red tape. Helping individuals to make out of Europe a common whole should be based not only on technical measures, however, but also on enlarging the European dimension of curricula.

Finally, the Ministers expressed their wish to meet 2 years later and to take stock of the measures decided in their various countries to turn their intentions into action. The Czech Republic offered to host a ministerial summit in Prague in May 200—where higher education delegates would also present to political leaders their views on the further development of a European space of higher education. To prepare their position, the institutions of higher education decided to meet as a Convention six weeks earlier, at the end of March in Salamanca, Spain; the higher education community—students and unions included—would decide there of their support to the development of some 6 to 10 levers for change which Ministers in Prague could include in some kind of action plan for the further implementation of the Bologna Declaration.

"I see you."..."I am here to be seen." Over the last two years, the Bologna process ignited hundreds of conversations, discussions and debates—in institutions, in university associations, in student organizations, in ministerial cabinets and among graduate employers. All were trying to imagine the shape of a European space of higher education and their role as stakeholders of such a system where commonalities of purpose, of structures and of action would help bypass or subsume traditional differences. At a European level, the 30 Ministers nominated in their cabinet one officer to take charge of the Bologna process, these contact persons meeting with higher education representatives and EU delegates at least every six months to exchange notes and steer national transformation along converging lines of European interest. With the support of the European Commission, various conferences have explored the potential of new structures in the region as a whole, for instance to allow for credit accumulation; for professional integration after three years of study for a BA; for the provision of transnational education; or for accreditation as a result of quality assessment. In each of these meetings, ministerial representatives joined with representatives of the higher education sector, at national or European level. Europe is brewing with ideas for change and several countries have already taken far-reaching decisions. In Italy, for instance, the universities were given two years to change all their curricula from a traditional four to five year structure leading to the Laurea, the U.S. equivalent of a MA, to a two tier structure, three years for a BA and two more years for a MA. At the same time, however, to allow for real changes, the government decided to relax administrative controls on academic provision and to grant real autonomy to institutions so that they could differentiate their services according to their strengths and to the needs of their own community. In Rome, indeed, the Bologna process is no paper tiger only!

C. The Internationalisation of Quality Processes

Many other examples could be added to show that a process has really begun, even if nobody really knows where it will lead to in the coming decade. One thing is sure: It deals with identity structures, university profiles, service quality, customers' satisfaction and student protection. To enter discussion of these areas of interest, the Bologna Declaration points to four aspects in the exploration process of European similarities: readability, comparability, compatibility and transparency. In fact, they represent four stages in a deepening dialogue between the "I see you" and the "I am here to be seen." And that is why they can have wider than European value.

Readability: At first, the partners take mutual note of their presence, wonder about the shared elements of their identity and the definition of their differences; to size up each other, they need to test the value of those words and concepts used to communicate. While doing so, they tend to develop a set of common references with which they can introduce each other.

In the Bologna process, this stage is represented by the recommendation to use a diploma supplement, i.e., a document that would explain the content and efforts implied in the learning of the various disciplines that combine into a degree. Indeed, experts, teachers and employers of graduates had been working already for a while on a template reflecting these discussions by making clear not only the learning acquired and the capacity to comprehend a discipline shown by the degree holder, but also the national context and the preliminary experience of the student which would give depth to the graduate's competencies—as recognized in his or her own country. The document took years to develop as it required a long consultancy process in order to ensure that the concepts used were the same despite the many languages and academic systems dividing the European higher education community. The diploma supplement is now being added to degree certificates in pilot institutions—before its use is soon generalized.

Even if the process proved long and difficult, readability did not imply changes in the provision of higher education in the various countries adopting the supplement. Common references just allowed for clarity; they did not entice value judgements on the partners. They represented signs posted on the road to understanding the other.

In the Bologna process, this stage is represented by the recommendation to generalize the use of the European credit transfer system. ECTS had been created for assessing the workload of exchange students joining courses in another institution as part of the ERASMUS program: Acceptance of the content of the course had been prepared by teachers from several institutions meeting to compare discipline requirements and pedagogy in advance of the exchange of their undergraduates, usually for their third or fourth term of studies. In such a protected environment, workload—i.e., the teaching process—represented the main variable when comparing the learning experience since trust about the content had been developed otherwise. Students' workload for a year had to be expressed in terms of 60 credits. Each institution was to devise ways to allocate effort to credits and it soon became apparent that the exercise could be done for all curricula at all levels in any given institution. Universities began to move from a partial use of ECTS in the ERASMUS framework to an institutional use of ECTS credits not only for the external but also for the internal comparability of academic provision. All countries are now encouraging the spread of the system—and also its possible extension to content evaluation as the generalization of ECTS no longer requires preliminary discussions with international partners about the extent of common course material and the similarity in didactics.

The process was slow to develop, but now hundreds of universities have decided to use ECTS as a matter of course, since it helps them to monitor the provision of services inside the institution. Common criteria allow for the common understanding of differences, which partners—national or European—can now recognize as objective, but they do not require institutional changes in order to iron out such differences.

Compatibility: Shared criteria are a prerequisite for compatibility, the third stage of an inquisitive dialogue. At that stage, value judgements become the norm as a consequence of the comparative exercise. To keep the openness required by a working partnership, i.e., the trust in a fair and constructive evaluation by others, the need for a set of common principles becomes obvious.

In the Bologna process, this stage is represented by the recommendation to assess the impact of credit accumulation and of quality evaluation on European higher education. Traditionally, quality structures have been developed by governments wishing to monitor—or control—the value of academic services in their country. In Europe, authorities rarely sanction faulty departments or institutions; rather, they attempt to spur improvement so that higher education as a public service can be continued. The sophistication of the process, and its extent, however, are very different from country to country, and so is the maturity of the agencies entrusted with the assessment. France, Britain and the Netherlands were the first to engage in the cyclical evaluation of their universities and developed central structures able to audit institutions and evaluate programs. Later, other countries followed suit, but each with a different set of priorities and modalities.

In the early '90s, the European Commission decided to convene the various actors in the field, mainly the national agencies, to see if some common agenda could be drawn out from various country approaches. As states were considering that the control of education remained a basic prerogative of governments, European efforts had to be limited to the development of a platform for information exchange. That was the basis for ENQA, the European Network of Quality Agencies, set up two years ago. However, after the Bologna Declaration was signed, comparison of good practice seemed very minimal compared to the ambitious goal of a European space of higher education. Institutions have not only to develop side by side, under frontier protection, but also, and much more so, to work together across national borders. Compatibility of governance procedures, of development conditions, of curricular patterns, of program selection, is now needed and this implies a consensus on shared principles by which the academic world could abide everywhere in the region.

The conferences organized at the European level in the framework of the Bologna process all search for such core principles that would institutionalize convergence by turning it into compatibility: moving from credit transfer to credit accumulation, from academic degrees to qualifications with market value, from national protection to competition with border-less education, from evaluation to accreditation—all these themes imply transformations in systems and institutions if they are to adapt to changed conditions. As a result, compatibility means commitment, i.e., taking choices of improvement at the risk of convergence.

Transparency: At the end of the dialectical process, partners should all recognise that "they are here to be seen," in other words that their books are open and that their agenda for change and their priorities are shared by the European community of higher education. Thus, its development as a whole would grow on a trust based on a common understanding of higher education's new international identity.

In the Bologna process, this last stage is represented by the call for a European space of higher education to be set up by 2010. Indeed, if intellectual services are to be as free flowing as material goods, financial products or individual citizens in a Union enlarged to the wider part of geographical Europe, openness will need to be reinforced, although without harming institutions in weaker positions—perhaps by stressing again the importance of public service, i.e., the regulatory tradition of political authorities, at executive and legislative level. However, the most innovative element in the Bologna process in terms of transparency is the ongoing dialogue between the Ministers and the representatives of the higher education community. Claude Allegre, then Minister of Education in France, at a CRE conference in Bordeaux just a few weeks before Bologna in 1999, urged higher education institutions "to put their act together" in order to become reliable partners for politicians interested in tomorrow's knowledge society—a good justification for an enlarged autonomy at the service of the community. Since then, the tension between the political and academic poles of the debate has been kept and, born out of that tension, exchanges, proposals, meetings and debates multiplied in a seemingly disorderly but constructive way, uninvited opinions coming to the fore as well as fully thought through strategies of change and progress.

This paradoxical situation can question administrative rationality but, should one of the poles be turned off, the other would immediately stop and the circuit of innovation would die out. As a result, the future of the Bologna process is much linked to the openness and the will for transparency manifested in its first few years. Uncertainty, flexibility and inventiveness are both the children of tension as well as the conditions of social innovation. History will say if European higher education will have taken up this opportunity for re-engineering its development, thus managing a course of discomfort in order to weave the European dimension in all its activities, norms and values. The process is risky, but that is why it is so challenging and interesting.

D. Lessons from Europe

Let us stress first the obvious: For people to meet, there must be an occasion to do so. Even better, there must be a need to so. In Europe, since the end of World War II, countries and institutions have met again and again, getting to know each other, comparing each other, committing to shared purposes, joining in common action. This is the whole history of the movement of European integration since the '50s.

It matured faster in the economic field—the creation of a single market for goods, capital and services—than in social areas or the intellectual domain. In the latter fields, nation-states pressed to retain their autonomy as far as social and educational policies were concerned. The complexity of the process increased when the Union moved from 6, to 9, to 12, to 15 members. And now it is expecting another 14 nations to join in the coming decade! Basically, however, all these countries—when entering the Union—accept the existing state of integration and adapt their internal structures to those prevailing in the Union. This is what is called in Brussels the acquis communautaire. In other words, states and institutions must become euro-compatible before entering the community. And, here too, compatibility means transformation.

The need for intellectual services to become an integral part of some kind of acquis communautaire has grown with the free flow of individuals moving in search of labor from one country to another: Anywhere in Europe, people want to capitalize on their training and acquired competencies, and in the same conditions if possible. The future enlargement of the Union from a community of some 400 to some 600 million inhabitants now compels nations to move from ad hoc bilateral recognition to a multilateral acceptance of the education given in other countries. But, if this is not to be done at the detriment of the citizens—i.e., the lowering of requirements to reach the lowest common denominator existing between varying systems of education in some 30 countries—converging paths towards the improvement of the system considered as a European whole must be defined and agreed upon by all partners in the higher education community.

For many years, and in many areas of knowledge, this is still the case; people and institutions have remained at the readability stage, getting to know the differences rather than pointing to the commonalities. In the Union, there have been efforts steered by the Commission in Brussels to move to the comparability stage of any dialogue, for example through ECTS, and even to compatibility, through common programs like ERASMUS or SOCRATES. But, even there, the work was based on the search for existing commonalities rather than on inventing new ones. A European added value based on a set of common principles agreed upon for Europe as a whole was not so essential. The Bologna process—paradoxically by turning back to the nations themselves as the main partners in the integration movement—is emphasizing again that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and that, as a consequence, Europe has a structure of its own that can become the target for converging approaches in higher education and research.

Such a European identity should be the basis for the presence and action of European institutions of higher education in other parts of the world, either by attracting more students to Europe or by offering European courses outside the region. Indeed, the Ministers have asked for increased attractiveness in order to compete better with the rest of the world. Cohesion—expressed by readability, comparability and compatibility—would be our best comparative advantage—but there is a long way to go! All the more so, as many competitors are nearer to that objective than the many countries of Europe considered as a group.

The Bologna Declaration would have had no impact had it not fallen on prepared ground. Indeed, and this is true for any process in international quality improvement, compatibility cannot be reached if the earlier stages of the dialogue have not been developed -- the readability and comparability stages. The growth towards transparency is really an organic process. Bypassing earlier stages in the encounter process is like building a house on sand.

An organic process implies patience, a growing understanding of each other's commonalities, a slow trial-and-error approach to define shared references, shared criteria and shared principles. Patience and caring for changes achieved step by step are then the keys to transformation into a compatible international ensemble whose dynamics are given by a nexus of tensions, those poles of decision—political, academic, economic—looking for shared power in order to reach a common aim. Hence, the importance of having and being strong and credible partners.

To sum up, any encounter of the other, any taming of the fears evoked by the other, is based on a change of attitude, moving from suspicion based on an emphasis on differences to convergence patterns which stress commonalities, i.e., potential areas of confidence; convergence, as a consequence, leads to discovering coherence between activities, norms and values as far as they express the institution's identity; when taking advantage of such shared features in academic work in order to develop compatible programmes, institutions then move to some kind of cohesion as a team of actors. As soon as trust has developed to the point of setting up common activities using the group's own specificity, the process should move from cohesion to consistency, or transparency in action.

"From convergence to consistency," this should be the motto of quality improvement and accreditation in higher education, at national, European or global levels.

"I saw you"..."I was also here to be seen."

Now the floor is yours.