A History of the Globalization of Universities: European Higher Education Area Viewed From the Perspectives of the Enlightenment and Industrialism

Abstract

This chapter is being written at a time when European university systems are undergoing a significant reorganization in the context of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), also known as the Bologna Process (European Ministers of Education, 1999). At present, European Union (EU) universities are expected to transform and strengthen their links with society in the context of globalization. In both economic and cultural terms, the clearest underlying feature of the changes underway is the central role knowledge is expected to play in contributing to productive and reproductive processes. In this regard, the explicit aim of the Bologna Process is to turn universities into the driving force behind a knowledge society that would generate economic growth, consolidate social cohesion and facilitate the leading position that Europe has historically occupied in the world system. The proposals for university reform being put forward in the current period of globalization are not the products of fate, but of historical contingency. They can therefore be analyzed as part of a long process of both academic and broader social changes, conflicts and resistances, and compared to other large-scale projects that have promoted the transformation of universities in the past. Specifically, this chapter relates the proposals of the EHEA reform to programs cultivated, on the one hand, by the Enlightenment tradition of the eighteenth century; and, on the other, by the industrialism of the nineteenth century.