Looking back in anger? Putting in perspective the implementation of the Bologna process in Finnish and Portuguese higher education systems Open Access

The analysis of policy implementation tends to focus on aspects related to legal frameworks, neglecting countries’ cultural, political and institutional specifics. By comparing the implementation of the Bologna declaration in the Portuguese and Finnish higher education systems, this paper reflects on the different permutations of cultural-political changes wrought by the Europeanisation of higher education. Analysing policy implementation is thus considered essential to understand (effects of) policy change. This research adds to the literature on higher education policy the voices of practioners drawn from 47 interviews of system and institutional key actors in both countries. It is argued that while Portugal has a top-down tradition of policy implementation, Finland has been following a hybrid model of decision-making, combining top-down and bottom-up approaches. Empirical data challenge the importance of the national cultural dimension because, as is shown here, interviewees’ perceptions differ more according to their role rather than their nationality. The apparent lack of visibility of national differences is explained by convergent trends such as managerialism and subsequent implications for the academic profession.

The integration of educational policies with the social and economic structures of modern societies led to changes in political discourses, particularly in Europe, where the term ‘knowledge society’ has been used as a key to meta-narrative or as a governance tool to accomplish European integration (Schmidt-Wellenburg, 2017).

Politically, the Bologna process (and the establishment of the European Research Area, ERA), represents the most far-reaching reform of higher education and it reflects the growing geographical and political expansion of the European Union, EU (Amaral & Neave, 2009). This is probably one of the main reasons why the process has been accorded so much attention and importance. By involving 48 countries (plus the European Commission) until now (year 2019), willing to undertake a series of institutional and system reforms in the common ambition to increase the competitiveness of their higher education systems, the Bologna process also reflects the growing internationalisation of this sector (Diogo 2014; Olsen 2002).

In order to accomplish international, national, and institutional targets, the EU uses ‘soft law’ to implement national policies’ goals. In the case of higher education and science, this methodology of policy implementation follows the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). As the terminology suggests, soft law differs from hard law as it refers to quasi-legal instruments, normally non-binding, but which represent a potentially important normative system which allows the production of change in social policy and other areas as they are based on the voluntary cooperation of member states (Trubek & Trubek, 2005). Although promoting change, this does not guarantee complete convergence, at least at the lowest levels of implementation, due to a lack of coordination emerging from different national agendas (Amaral & Neave, 2009). Tholoniat (2010) explains that due to its non-coercive nature, the OMC has accomplished action in areas long associated with national sovereignty, thereby guaranteeing a level of institutional stability sufficient to allow effective policy delivery, while being considered a form of socio-economic governance at EU level.

Despite clear historical, geographical, cultural, and economic contrasts, Portugal and Finland work as a good case study for analysing different permutations of cultural-political changes wrought by the Europeanisation of higher education in recent years. Both countries have recently implemented similar higher education legislative reforms and received similar feedback from the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) review teams with respect to governance and management reforms, human resources policies, and shifts in higher education institutions legal status (Diogo 2014; Kauko and Diogo 2011). Additionally, both higher education systems have a binary structure, composed of universities and polytechnics/universities of applied sciences, which used to confer longer study degrees before the implementation of the Bologna declaration. The two-cycle degree system already under the Bologna framework was first adopted in Finland in 2005 and in 2007 in Portugal. Furthermore, both Finland and Portugal are relatively small and peripheral European countries, albeit with different economic structures and international statuses (Kauko & Diogo, 2011).

As the national implementation of the Bologna process required a revision of national legal frameworks, the higher education systems of signatory countries became closer to the European guidelines and the OECD recommendations (Nicolaides, 2013). In fact, the Europeanisation of national administrations extended to higher education (Knill, 2001), making the Bologna process the visible face of the internationalisation of the sector. This was also possible through the development of institutions at the European level, with some degree of coordination and coherence among them, such as quality agencies created alongside the consolidation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) (Olsen, 2002). Other international organisations have been powerful agents in the diffusion and convergence of national policies for higher education (Martens, Balzer, Sackmann, & Wexmann, 2004), but (in the last 20 years) the Bologna process has played a key role in stoking national higher education reforms, including the governance structures of higher education institutions (Dobbins, Knill, & Vögtle, 2011; Štech, 2011).

In Portugal, implementing the Bologna process coincided with higher education institutions’ governance and management reform enacted by Law 62/2007 (RJIES), which stipulates the new legal framework for higher education institutions. In Finland, it is easier to separate these events, at least chronologically. The Bologna process was officially implemented during the academic year of 2005/06 and the New Universities Act (Uusi Ylipistolaki 558/2009) was enforced in January 2010. Briefly, these changes sought to increase higher education institutions’ autonomy, change their organisational structures, affecting the allocation of funds and decision-making processes and policies concerning working conditions and human resources practices.

Since 2005, it is thus possible to observe in both Portuguese and Finnish higher education systems a confluence of pressures to transform higher education institutions to more market-like organisations, economically relevant and aligned with managerialist practices (Diogo 2014; Carvalho & Diogo 2017). As Bleiklie, Enders, Lepori, and Musselin (2011, p. 168) claim, ‘While the reforms aimed by the Bologna agenda as such have little to do with NPM, its goals of efficiency (and student mobility) are easily associated with NPM.’

Likewise, Dobbins et al. (2011, p. 665) refer to the Bologna process and the spread of new public management as convergent processes which increasingly subject higher education institutions and systems to competitive visions of governance. The idea of competition is very much sponsored by the European Commission (and other international organisations such as the OECD) through financial and logistical resources and economic expertise (Schmidt-Wellenburg, 2017) to gain legitimacy, sympathy, and freedom of maneuvre to introduce a ‘neoliberal modernisation’ agenda in the higher education systems (Harmsen, 2015).

The literature on the Bologna process is vast – as the possibilities and perspectives of analysing such dynamics of change are. This paper addresses the Bologna declaration as a political initiative capable of travelling to different countries, as for example Portugal and Finland, and becoming institutionalised in a wide variety of higher education institutions. Such a perspective confirms the Bologna process as the most extensive example of policy transfer/policy diffusion in higher education (Brøgger, 2018) and intergovernmental cooperation. In order to deepen knowledge of the field of higher education research, this paper contextualises and interlinks the process of policy design and implementation of the Bologna declaration in such different cultural and political settings, evidencing the interchange between the global and the local levels – also through the voices of those in charge of the implementation process in Portugal and in Finland at the national and institutional levels.

Within globalisation and internationalisation, nation-states still play a determining role in defining and implementing (higher education) policies. Policy emphasis should be thus put on the ‘building of strategic international relationships, based on mutual co-operation and also on mutual observation’ (Enders, 2004, 367). In this context, the OMC has offered the European Commission a new approach to govern the Bologna process through its innovative properties, such as flexibility, routine procedures, multi-lateral surveillance, indicators and guidelines, benchmarking, sharing of best practices, and lack of formal restrictions. The use of soft law thus works in a twofold way: it offers the member states and the EU institutions ‘a template for coordinating public policies within the EU that in principle would not upset the balance between the nation states and the supranational level’ Gornitzka (2007, p. 155), while it also has the advantage of allowing some governments to shift the blame of unpopular domestic agendas to the OMC process or to the EU (Radaelli, 2003; Schäfer, 2004; Zeitlin, 2008).

Another effective form of soft law mechanisms has been administrated by international organisations through their national reviews and recommendations, working as diffusers, networkers and coordinators of higher education policies and therefore softening the power of localisms. An overemphasis on globalisation and internationalisation forces tends thus to neglect the importance of local factors and actors or the translation of these to the national spheres. Nevertheless, this interchange between the global and the local, as well as operational institutional levels is a complex one. According to Deem (2001, p. 11), localised factors explain change in management practices and the institutionalisation of a managerial ethos. These localisms include cultural factors (new ideas about knowledge), social factors (new and more diverse student groups), as well as economic factors (declining public funding) in universities. Localisms highlight economic and political contrasts between both countries, and the role that international organisations have in higher education policies design (and implementation) (Diogo 2014; Kallo, 2009; Qadir, 2016), contributing, in turn and paradoxically to political converge. For example, reforms in public administration and higher education need to be conceptualised within the different political administrative systems and traditions; but such changes should not be isolated from the governmental pressures exerted on public administration, which have followed roughly similar practices, in order to make public organisations more efficient, more competitive, and more accountable. In fact, few studies link NPM and managerialism reforms with the Bologna process and governance changes (Schimank & Lange, 2009; Štech, 2011; Teelken, 2012), and even fewer – as pointed out by Stromquist (2000, p. 262) analyse NPM constructs and their application bearing in mind important cultural and political dimensions.

The vast majority of studies on the Bologna process focus on the academic and pedagogical aspects of the process (Ramos et al., 2015), different stakeholders’ perspectives on the process (Brändle, 2016; Palfreyman, 2008); flexible learning pathways (Jakobi & Rusconi, 2009; Reichert & Tauch, 2003), recognition processes (Pfeffer & Skrivanek, 2018), reorganisation of the degrees system and its nature (Curaj, Scott, Vlasceanu, & Wilson, 2012; Reinalda & Kulesza-Mietkowski, 2005), along with quality assurance issues (Adam, 2004; Saarinen, 2005; Wächter, 2004), mobility issues (Pfeffer & Skrivanek, 2018), and the attractiveness of the European Higher Education Area (Communiqué, 2012); that is, aspects related to the first stage of the Bologna declaration (Witte, 2004, 2006).

This paper adds to the topic of policy implementation and diffusion the perspective of the practioners, of those who, both at national and institutional levels think out, design and implement change. This is why reforms cannot be seen as a mere political process that people and nations have to implement, but rather as dynamic ‘initiatives’ with active participation of states and governments and other stakeholders Brøgger’s (2018). The nature of this participation tends to be different according to each country's political tradition and level of engagement with certain ideologies and practices (such as managerialism). The literature on the sociology of professions, for example, has drawn attention to how NPM and managerialism affect the way academics rationalise and perform their work and to changes in the academia (Aarrevaara, 2015; Ball, 2012; Carvalho, 2017; Carvalho & Diogo, 2018; Carvalho & Santiago, 2015, 2016a, 2016b; Muzio, Brock, & Suddaby, 2013; Santiago, Carvalho, & Cardoso, 2015; Santiago, Carvalho, & Ferreira, 2015). In turn, Neave (2005) contends that political time is not aligned with academic time, a fact that was visible in the empirical data in this paper. For Neave (2005), there is a clash between what he coined ‘political time’ and ‘academic time’. While political time derives from “technological imperatives of the knowledge society and its ‘productivist’ ethic” (therefore being even called production time), academic time refers to ‘time required to assimilate [students, academics] a corpus of knowledge’ and was usually decided by universities (Neave 2005: 18). This conflict between ‘political’ and ‘academic’ time strengthens the role of system and institutional actors as drivers of policy change, as well as the interaction among different levels of governance, while accepting that no organisation or agent is ever autonomous (Qadir, 2016; Saarinen & Ursin, 2012). On this, new institutionalism enlightens the study of policy diffusion as it elucidates on the questions why some educational trends and reforms diffuse and others do not (Meyer, Ramirez, Frank, & Schofer, 2008; Ramirez, 2012). Policy diffusion is thus a process in which policy innovations and (best) practices spread from one government to another (Shipan & Volden, 2008). National characteristics and traditions, like political constraints, ideological preferences, domestic politics condition policy diffusion (Meseguer & Gilardi, 2009). By profiling and historically tracking both Portuguese and Finnish higher education (cultural) settings, it is hoped to understand this complex intersection between different national political administrative traditions and welfare state models (Nordic vs. Southern model) are framed by a similar credo – NPM – determining a more or less public participation in decision-making, culminating into more or less collaborative processes of intergovernmental cooperation such as the Bologna declaration. In fact, in exploring differences between policy travelling and policy implementation in both countries, it can be seen that national goals, policy technologies, instruments and ideologies are highly transferrable but still quite local. Localisms are thus visible in interviewees’ discourses as well as on the mismatch between political and academic times, evidencing the local over the global/international arena at least, in the discourse of institutional actors, as Section Implementing Bologna process in Portugal: Instrumentalising Bologna for national purposes bellow shows.

For many years, higher education in Portugal was considered an elite system. Although the first university was created in the thirteenth century, it was only after the 1974 democratic revolution that attempts to create a mass educational system (and a welfare state) were developed (Almeida & Vieira, 2012). A binary system was created – very much sponsored by the OECD and the World Bank – and the private higher education system emerged in the 1980s – a subsystem that never emerged in Finland, at least in the way it exists in Portugal (Diogo 2016; Kauko & Diogo 2011).¹

Although at an earlier stage than in Portugal, Finnish universities were elitist institutions until the mid-1900s when they were only present in Turku and Helsinki. This explains the low levels of educational attainment in Finland until the 1960s: achieving a university degree was uncommon, and the Finnish education level lagged behind its Scandinavian neighbours (Sahlberg, 2010). However, the system expanded rapidly during the 1960s, as a result of a welfare state agenda supported by the major political parties (Välimaa, 2004). The ideal of equal educational opportunities for all citizens regardless of their gender, socio-economic status, or location was one of the underpinning principles of the development of Finnish higher education from the 1960s to the present day, contrary to what was happening in Portugal at the time. Still, it is important that Finnish society has had a very positive attitude towards education, which has been considered important throughout Finnish history. Universities and university degrees still retain a high social prestige in Finland (Sahlberg, 2010; Välimaa, 2001), contrary to Portugal where the value of a university degree has depreciated (Almeida & Vieira, 2012, p. 155). Nevertheless, the Finnish welfare model has also faced financial problems and critics related to its old-fashioned, bureaucratic and administrative culture (Salminen, 2008), leading to managerial reforms in the country. In fact, it can be said that Finland introduced NPM earlier than Portugal due to the later emergence of the Portuguese quasi-welfare model. Portugal, in turn, similarly to other OECD countries, saw a decrease in public funding and the emergence of austerity measures with the financial crisis that started around 2008, triggering reforms in the Portuguese higher education system framed by the NPM ideology and practice. Within this domain, both countries have been subjected to the influence of international organisations (mostly from the OECD and the EU) in order to make their higher education systems more competitive and aligned with the European modernisation agendas.

In 2006, for example, Portugal's socialist government (elected with a parliamentary majority) requested an OECD assessment of the Portuguese higher education system in order to propose reforms and adopt the European guidelines approved in the Bologna context. In 2007, based on the OECD recommendations, the government approved RJIES, which became the new legal framework for higher education institutions. Similar to the Portuguese path, the OECD published a higher education country review in 2009. Supported by this report, Finland went through legislative changes, resulting in the New Universities Act (Law 558/2009) aiming to further extend the autonomy of universities (OKM, 2016). Briefly, and not oversimplifying, both the RJIES and the New Universities Act are sustained by three neoliberal ideas: market, management (or managerialism) and performance (or performativity) (Ball, 2016), which shows that the neoliberal doctrine – diffused by the OECD – is accepted by national governments. In fact, despite different political, administrative and social context in the two countries, both have recently come under the same global pressures to change higher education systems.

The recent popularity of comparative education must be seen in the light of the increasing internationalisation of educational policies leading to the diffusion of global patterns (Nóvoa & Yariv-Mashal, 2003, p. 426). Using the implementation of the Bologna process as an example of policy diffusion, this paper focuses on the different permutations of cultural-political changes – both at the system and institutional levels – wrought by the Europeanisation of higher education.

In addition to an extensive literature review, document analysis was applied to the main pieces of legislation regulating the implementation of the Bologna process in Portugal and in Finland aiming at comparing – through institutional case studies – how policies travel and settle down (that is, how policies become institutionalised Diogo, Carvalho and Amaral 2015; Diogo 2016). The study also draws on empirical evidence from 47 semi-structured interviews with key actors of system and institutional levels (one university in each country) in both countries during the years 2011 and 2012. These social actors were chosen due to their specific roles and degree of involvement in the study object: by the time the Bologna process was signed and implemented, they were responsible – at government level and within institutions – to implement Bologna. Four higher education institutions were chosen: one university and one polytechnic in each country in order to collect perceptions from specific individuals of both types of higher education institutions in both countries. Interviewees are thus higher-education policy-makers, rectors, vice rectors, presidents of polytechnics, heads of departments and polytechnic schools, academics, lecturers, and administrative staff. Institutional actors were then classified according to the type of institution they work in and their role (Table 1). Nevertheless, focusing only in four institutions – two on each country – and on 35 interviews of individuals working in these institutions limits the possibility to draw conclusions on perceptions of the Bologna process, even if the institutions and the actors are typical sample representations of both countries, that is, individuals holding the same roles, such as rectors, or Deans of the same departments/faculties. Acknowledging this limitation led us to interview system-level actors in both countries (six in each country, holding similar positions). In the event, this limitation helped to tune our study object: to understand how different countries think, design and implement similar political initiatives to the Bologna process, how they travel and how the global and the local interlink.

Interviews were conducted in three different departments (Physics, Languages, and Engineering) and two different Polytechnic Schools (Nursing and Management, that is, soft and hard disciplines) in the same countries, hoping to grasp different disciplinary fields’ realities, with different professionals’ ambitions and concerns, and different organisations of knowledge.

Both interviews and document analysis were submitted to content analysis through thematic coding with the help of qualitative data analysis software (Atlas.ti). Four main themes specifically targeting the Bologna process were approached in the interviews: (i) overall perception of the Bologna perception; (ii) political design and organisation of the Bologna process; (iii) implementation and development of the process; and (iv) perceptions on the outcomes and further steps. The discussion and conclusions presented in this paper drawn on the second and third dimensions: the political organisation and design of the implementation of the Bologna declaration in Portugal and Finland.

Although the Portuguese higher education system is one of the oldest in Europe, it is in the last 45 years – mostly due to the massification of the system and the Bologna process (Simões, 2016) – that the pace of change has speed up. Change, however, has been coercively enforced by legislation and it was only with the Law 49/2005 passed by the Parliament (August 30th) that the Education System Act allowed for the adoption of the Bologna organisational model composed of three cycles of studies and emphasised the transition from a traditional teaching paradigm to a student-learning paradigm (Diogo 2016). Before the passing of Law 49/2005, public discussions concerning the interpretation and implementation of the Bologna objectives by different stakeholders took place: Bologna was a ‘moving target,’ a ‘traveller idea’ that positioned higher education in the public debate (and domain), mobilising energy and interest at all implementation levels (Kehm, Huisman, & Stensaker, 2009; Neave & Maassen, 2007). In fact, on the one hand the Portuguese government passed legislation to introduce the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) and the compulsory use of the Diploma Supplement, and appointed specialised task forces to work on the implementation of the law (Veiga, Rosa, & Amaral, 2005, p. 95); but on the other hand, in the absence of legislation or guidance from a superior level, Portuguese higher education institutions, aware of international trends and developments performed by their European counterparts that had already implemented the process, became quite anxious due to delays in governmental regulation. This was not a smooth process, a fact easily acknowledged by the great majority of interviewees, including the politicians working at the Ministry of Higher Education:

Even those institutional interviewees without management positions (academics that mostly have teaching and research duties) were also aware of the different coercive and normative pressures, that is, the different sources and directions pressuring for change came from both international and national levels:

The implementation of the Bologna process gained new momentum after the government passed the Decree-Law 74/2006 creating the necessary legal framework to adapt the old study programmes to the Bologna degree structure. The government then called for higher education institutions to submit their proposals adapting former degrees to the new degree structure. Around 1500 proposals were presented, which came as a surprise to the ministry as it expected that only in exceptional cases would proposals be submitted (Veiga & Amaral, 2009) – as the time stated in the legislation to adapt the old study degree structure to the new one was only two weeks (74/2006, 2006):

These different but parallel periods (different political and academic times) created an environment of tension, a fact that has been identified as one of the most nonsensical aspects of the way the process was executed and it was highly criticised by all interviewees, including some Ministry interviewees who even ridiculed the fast speed in which the legislation obliged institutions to rearrange their degree structures. Simultaneously, this already points to the priorities and possible hidden agendas of the process: shorter study cycles equals lower state investment in higher education and a subsequent and gradual pulling away of the government from the sector. These are all characteristics of a more market-driven manner of governance, reflecting social actors’ political assumptions. In sum, and as the following citation from the national polytechnic sector representative shows, Bologna was intrumentalised according to actors beliefs and preferences. What is simultaneously evidenced in the empirical data is the lack of consensus – regardless the role of interviewees – on the way the process was organised and implemented. Curiously, among some system level interviewees, academics and administrative staff, there is a general belief that higher education institutions did not have enough time to organise themselves, which was confirmed by a national survey conducted in 2009 (Veiga & Amaral, 2009). In turn, middle management academics and some politicians argue that nothing forced institutions to undertake the adaptation process in such a hurry. However, higher education institutions feared losing their competitive advantage if they did not follow the ministry guidelines as soon as possible. In the race to modernisation, prestige and competition for students, it was believed that the Bologna implementers would have an advantage over Bologna-laggards: Concomitantly, when the legislation was passed, the ministry only approved the proposals that were in line with the patterns that it believed to be suitable. At the institutional level this created exasperation as academics felt that their efforts during the preparation time were not valued enough. Moreover, some academics even felt that there had been no negotiations at all, and the main topics of the Bologna agenda had already been decided. An example is the length of the new study cycles: some interviewees feel that the debate on whether the standard new model would be 3 + 2 or 4 + 1/2 was a ‘waste of time’ once there were already enough ‘signs’ pointing to the common main trend of 3 + 2, also due to economic reasons. The lack of discussions and decision-making power at the level of basic units was mentioned by interviewees from all institutional levels in both the polytechnic and the university subsystems: Thus, institutional interviewees melancholically mentioned that, despite all the endeavours institutional staff developed towards the implementation of the Bologna process, it would have been beneficial to work more in collaboration with the government, so that proposals would have been more adjusted to the ministry's views. Nevertheless, as explained in the first part of this paper, the ministry ideas were more aligned with international recommendations from the EU and the OECD, which explains the challenge between conciliate (institutional) localisms and national interests and the international requirements. With respect to power dynamics, one may also hypothesise that – in addition to the frustration felt regarding the lack of attention given to the proposals prepared by academics – these two groups of interviewees – top and middle management actors – aimed, during these discussions, to augment their (and their institutions/units) national, local and institutional power and/or influence – but this was held back due to the top-down implementation process.

Not so differently from Portugal, the priority with the Bologna process in Finland was the re-adaptation of the content and structure of the curricula and the adoption of the new two-tier degree structure (FINHEEC, 2012). The adoption of the new degree system was facilitated by previous reforms in the Finnish higher education system. Between 1994 and 1997, a new degree structure was reintroduced to most of the university fields of study, based on two main cycles: a three-year first cycle university degree (kandidaatin tutkinto), the lower academic degree, and a higher second cycle university degree (maisterin tutkinto), the higher academic degree, which takes more two years to complete after the lower academic (first cycle) degree (Universities Act 645/1997). The revision of the degree programmes aimed to reduce graduation times and make degrees broader, more flexible, and internationally comparable, considering that in Finland, even before the Bologna process, bachelor degrees were not sufficient for the labour market and the majority of students went directly to the master's degree right after obtaining the bachelor degree (FINHEEC, 2012; OKM, 2016). The master's degree was (and still is) the minimum qualification required to access most professions in Finland, for example public sector positions. This is thus a major difference between the Portuguese and Finnish higher education systems and signals the high appreciation Finnish society has for education, signalling the prevalence of the localisms vis-a-vis the international level.

The ‘normalisation’ of Finnish higher education according to the Bologna declaration and subsequent Communiqués came through Law 794/2004, with the purpose of reducing the excessive graduation time, particularly in universities, for Finnish students to complete their studies (Välimaa, Hoffman, & Huusko, 2007, p. 46). Bologna was thus instrumentalised, hoping that by reducing the length of degrees, students would more easily complete their studies and leave universities sooner. Still, in practice this did not happen, which denotes one of the flaws in implementing the Bologna process in Finland as it did not encourage students to take (only) the bachelor degree: ‘So this has been one of the things that has been constantly under attack, but it hasn't really changed yet’ (1Fs). This fact would be acknowledged later on by the Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council (2012, p. i), when it stated that some reforms have been formally been “achieved (…) on the level of legislation, but are lacking practical implementation”.

Additionally, other problems could be identified in Finnish higher education, namely high dropout rates and the transition from higher education to work, caused by the changing needs of labour markets and necessary institutional responses to cope with this (FINHEEC, 2012, p. 35). The new two-tier degree structure was intended to make it easier to move from higher education institutions to the working life. Again, this is an aspect interrelated with the prolongation of studies and the employability of university students holding only a bachelor degree. Thus, in order to facilitate the implementation process, the Finnish Ministry of Education promoted the Bologna process as the solution for the problems of the national higher education system, thereby neutralising institutions’ resistance. This initial step was necessary as Finnish academics and universities took a fairly negative view of the Bologna process at first:

According to FINHEC (2012, p. 185), and institutional level interviewees, by 2011, the most negative feelings or ratings towards the implementation of the Bologna objectives in Finnish higher education related to shorter study times, the lower dropout rates – the two objectives ‘most poorly obtained’ (2012, p. 43) – and increasing international mobility. 
Nevertheless, as demonstrated by the previous quotation, positive views of the process are very likely to be given when they come from system-level interviewees. In turn, however, when social actors perform more than one role, either at different levels of action (for example system and institutional) or on different tasks (for example top-management and academic), their perceptions tend to be more critical and contain mixed feelings. In fact, similar to Portuguese academics, Finnish counterparts felt that, at the first stage of the process, the reform mostly happened only ‘on paper.’ However, and quite differently from the Portuguese interviewees, perceptions on the organisation and implementation of the Bologna process were positively consensual among all different interviewed actors: System level interviewees and academics too reported a successful organisation model, in which institutions could act independently, and, as corroborated by the FINHEEC report (2012, p. 45) pursue their own specific objectives alongside national objectives.


The different perceptions between Finnish and Portuguese actors about the Bologna process also relate to the degree of change assigned to it. Generally speaking, regardless of their knowledge field, faculty staff tend to perceive the level of novelty induced in the Finnish higher education system and higher education institutions as lower and more positive than in the Portuguese higher education system:

Top and middle management interviewees summarised the relationship between the ministry and higher education institutions quite straightforwardly: ‘In short, it was supervised by the ministry using a carrot and stick-mechanism on universities’ (FUTM).

The new degree structure was implemented in all study fields in August 2005 and divided the former master's level undergraduate degree programmes into separate bachelor's and master's degrees, that is to say, the first cycle ending with the award of a bachelor's degree that is intended to be relevant to European labour markets, and the second cycle consisting of master's degrees. The national credit allocation and accumulation system in universities was replaced by a system based on the principles of the ECTS. Admittedly, the introduction of the concept of a standardised study week in the 1970s as a unit to measure the hours that students need for their studies (Välimaa, 2005) simplified the implementation of ECTS, implying, again, the importance of having a common currency (Veiga & Amaral, 2009) within the EHEA to measure students’ workload.

At this stage, two important aspects should be remembered. Finland joined the EU in 1995 and in 1999 had its first EU presidency, a fact that coincided with the signing of the Bologna Declaration. This proximity of events stimulated the Europeanisation of Finnish higher education and Finnish interviewees regard the EU membership as paramount for the country in general, and higher education in particular. Such enthusiasm should be framed alongside the political past of the country as well as the importance of external politics for the sector. As system- and institutional-level interviewees described, these events created the perception that signing and implementing the Bologna agenda would ‘reinforce’ the Finnish presence in the EU:

Comparatively to their Portuguese counterparts, we can say that Finnish interviewees acknowledged the multiple possibilities of the Bologna process, or, in other words, the Bologna process represented one more possibility for the Europeanisation of higher education: However, particularly system-level interviewees admitted that, regarding the re-adaptation of the degree system and programmes, deeper and effective reflections and actions are still needed: Despite the general perception of the successful way of organising the reform, at the governmental level as well as in academia, it is acknowledged that implementation of some objectives happened more in form rather than in substance; that is, it still lacks practical implementation.

These views are aligned with interviewees’ perceptions of the importance attributed to education, one of the Finnish hallmarks. One of the main concerns expressed by most institutional level actors related to the pertinence of the bachelor and master's degrees, as they fear that master degrees will lose importance and meaning if bachelor degrees start to be emphasised. At the same time, they doubt whether the labour market will accept them:

Furthermore, as the system expands and becomes universal, Finnish interviewees believe that the average level of education of a society will move forward instead of stepping back – a shared idea among all interviewees. It would not be normal or even desirable to retreat to the bachelor degree after having achieved a tradition in which most students reach a certain level of education (master degree in the Finnish case). In this sense, except for the purely economic side, the Bologna model does not comply with the Nordic model of higher education. In other words, regardless of supranational policy and international influences, the Finnish case shows that nation states’ traditions and cultures have been stronger in the development of higher education policies, resisting hard managerial trends and strengthening the local over the global.

It is difficult to say with certainty which factors inspired Finnish politicians in the implementation process; whether it was this international environment or external influence. The common approach to establishing change in the system is to associate the intended reform to a common national goal, which is implemented through experiments carried out in one or more higher education institutions (for example the establishment of the polytechnic subsystem in the mid-1990s). All experiments are then supported by follow-up studies (Välimaa et al., 2007). But perhaps due to its international character, implementing the Bologna process required a new political design which could nevertheless be used for future international pledges. Being a document signed by several countries committed to achieving common objectives, it should not leave much room for experimentation (Diogo 2014, 2016).

By presenting two different national realities that, at first sight, are unlikely to be compared, this study aims at linking cultural and political, global and local representations capable of explaining policy diffusion, convergence and divergence, and consequently system and institutional change in Portuguese and Finnish higher education.

Political convergence owes much to the globalisation, internationalisation, and Europeanisation of higher education, of which the Bologna process and the Lisbon strategy are the most visible faces, as well as managerialism and NPM, speeding up change of European higher education. Although Portugal and Finland differ considerably, both countries have undertaken similar higher education legislative reforms; EU soft law and the New Public Management ideology – disseminated by reviews and discourses of international organisations – help to explain political convergence and similar modes of thinking change and working in academia in national contexts. Concomitantly, historical and cultural specifics and structural characteristics of both politico-administrative systems explain differences in the way national and institutional social actors organised and implemented the Bologna declaration, with different degrees of national and institutional satisfaction. The implementation of higher education policies in Portugal happens mainly through top-down processes and legislation tends to be (coercively) imposed on HEIs, which, in turn, these follow normative and mimetic modes of institutionalisation practices in order to cope with change and uncertainty. Practioners’ voices (as well as the literature review) showed that despite local and institutional efforts, the implementation process in Portugal was completely top-down, evidencing actors’ resistance to the process. Considering this abrupt fashion of implementation, it is possible to assume that Portuguese higher education institutions had to be more creative (for example regarding the reorganisation of study cycles, study programmes and their names) which does not necessarily imply more diversity or richness of syllabus. Concomitantly, the economic downturn that Portugal has experienced in the last years did not support the smooth implementation of legislation, a fact that might explain differences in the intensity and engagement of reforms as well as in the way legislation and changes are implemented.

In contrast, Finnish interviewees showed a more open stance towards change: they did not regard Bologna as a reform, and their traditional approach to policy design and execution is more collaborative, involving more key players, which can lead to a more equal degree of participation. In both cases, however, it is possible to argue that the European level has served as a legitimisation source for implementing and accepting change at the national level, as it was also the European Commission that urged higher education institutions to modernise, regardless of the level of maturation of each country. The Finnish example thus evidences thus a more synergetic dynamic between different levels of action, a fact that allowed Finland to instrumentalise the process towards its national motivations and purposes.

Comparing the processes of policy organisation and design in both countries, as well as the engagement and number of participants, allows us to infer that the impact created by the Bologna process is likely to last longer in Finland than in Portugal. In fact, the different emphases that both the Portuguese and the Finnish governments placed on the implementation of the Bologna process already denote different national and institutional priorities. Portugal's main concern was to shorten the degree structure in order to adapt it to European guidelines; Finland was more preoccupied with adapting curricula and learning outcomes. Indeed, focusing on both systemic and institutional levels of analysis allows us to better understand and ground the conditions of (un)successful policy implementation that are common to other countries as well as best practices. In fact, despite their national/local nature, or actually because of that, (national) goals, policy technologies, instruments and ideologies are highly transferrable, working as both powerful policy diffusers as well as localisms. The empirical data also challenged an initial assumption: interviewees’ perceptions differ more among the different groups of actors than between countries. This is probably the most striking contribution of this study, as – usually – the Bologna process is not analysed through such a panoply of actors/implementers. Moreover, it should be mentioned that being different countries, we would expect to find different perceptions among Portuguese and Finnish interviewees, but perceptions change according to interviewees’ roles more than their nationality – a fact that is not covered by the literature. National views and differences are more evidenced among system level interviewees than among institutional ones. This mismatch is explained by the fact that political time is not aligned with academic time (Neave, 2005), a fact that was more visible in the Portuguese case than in the Finnish system due to the lack of coordination and strategy of the different governments in power in the last decades and the lack of proper involvement of higher education stakeholders.

The author is thankful to the (anonymous) reviewers of this paper, whose valuable critics and suggestions have substantially enriched the paper.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Sara Diogohttp://orcid.org/0000-0001-7212-8626