THE BOLOGNA PROCESS - GOVERNING HIGHER EDUCATION IN EUROPE THROUGH STANDARDISATION

This article studies the rationalities of governing that makes it possible to govern higher education in Europe through a voluntarily process such as the Bologna process. 45 nations have signed it and try to accommodate to the ideas in it without anyone telling them they have to. Drawing on the Foucaultian notion of governmentality official documents concerning the Bologna process, higher- and adult education on the European and Swedish levels are analysed. In the first part "planetspeak" discourses such as knowledge society, employability, lifelong learning, quality assurance and mobility are analysed. They create a configuration of thought that makes following the Bologna process a rational way to act. In the second part we analyse this process as a standardisation technique which creates a tension related to the idea of freedom. The narratives create exclusion; those nations who chose not to participate are created as "the other", in need of remedy. In the third part we problematize how these ideas mesh with, and challenge local ideas about education. Even though the narratives produced in Sweden to major parts seem to adapt to the process, there is a creation of the "specific" Swedish. It acts as a persuasive technique for implement the ideas in the Bologna declaration.