Next stop, London

Kristin Clemet's eloquent plea for 2020 vision on the Bologna Process sat significantly alongside your editorial on boosting lifelong learning (Opinion, May 20). The Bergen meeting of European ministers that Clemet's article trailed had very positive things to report on progress with some of the Bologna action lines, notably on harmonisation of degree structures, quality assurance and student mobility. The Norwegian hosts offered a fine example of authentic commitment to internationalisation. But lifelong learning is quite simply ignored for the most part in the Bologna Process, despite being identified as an action line in the Prague communique that followed Bologna.

On current form, the Bologna Process is basically about enabling young students to move more easily between cycles and across borders, within systems that can have more confidence in each others' quality assurance. This is laudable in itself but very restricted in its reach. Even the so-called social dimension of higher education is not interpreted in terms of adult learners. The Lisbon objective of increasing adult learning participation rates to 12.5 per cent by 2010 looks very unlikely to be attained, and the contribution of universities across Europe to this objective looks limited, with some exceptions. (The exceptions include the UK, though this in no way invalidates your editorial arguing that higher education in the UK could do much more for adults.) Clemet is right to call for vision beyond Bergen; with London as the next stop. There is work to be done if it is to include lifelong learning on a non-rhetorical basis.

Tom Schuller
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris