In 1999, the Ministers of Education of European countries signed the Bologna Treaty. This agreement aims to make it easier for students and researchers to understand and access European education systems. The two main guidelines of this treaty are:
- The normalization of a learning achievements evaluation system – ECTS – so as to facilitate student mobility
- The promotion of a European Cooperation reflecting upon quality with a view to adjusting evaluation criteria and methods.
Now signed by 45 countries and reinforced by Lisbon Treaty on research, this treaty reaches beyond the European boundaries. The process launched by the Bologna Treaty enables students to travel freely and will ultimately give them the opportunity to attain a bachelor’s degree in their native country and to pursue their master’s degree in a foreign country. If education veers in that direction we will be compelled to rethink all our teaching and training methods so as to adapt them to an increased cultural heterogeneity within master programs.
We should not overlook the second consequence brought about by these treaties because it is going to cause drastic changes in the academic landscape as well as in the management and strategies of education institutions. Masters and “PhD’s” are just a budding market for now, but chances are that institutions will engage in a fierce competition to attract the best candidates. The long-prevailing cooperation with foreign institutions could give way to competition as schools and universities would strive to achieve the best rank in international reference listings. This would entail another consequence: research networks would work in collaboration with the best masters and would exclusively take in particularly competitive institutions appealing to the best students and professors.
Along with this evolution come significant changes in the management of institutions. Spurred by the need to achieve excellence, to face competition, to adapt to new markets, institution management is going to start resembling entrepreneurship and turning to companies in order to entice new resources.
This will give each institution the opportunity to elaborate its own specific marketing strategy. From then on, it will no longer make sense to take national educational systems into account: one will have to compare institutions with each other because the latter will instinctively adopt innovative positions in order to make a difference and enhance their brand image.
Public authorities will have to adapt to this new context within which it will no longer be possible to treat all universities equally. Political decisions will have to be taken with regards to which institutions they should keep promoting and which ones they should stop supporting. The consequences of this could be a decrease in the weight of state-run institutions and the educational policy of their board of directors, in favor of new industrial partners. Degrees always certified by state-run authorities to this day could start to be awarded as brands and no longer as academic references.
Collaboration with companies will undoubtedly impose itself on the academic world as an efficient way to entice new resources. It will inexorably affect research departments, operational relevance, and some kinds of guarantees as to learning achievements and results.
The Bologna Treaty resulted in the referencing of education institutions on an international level, a ranking often based on the ability of institutions to conduct research. It had particular consequences for design education. In a number of countries design is not traditionally taught at the university. As a consequence no research department has been founded yet there, and the notion of research in design is still to be defined. Therefore those countries are put at an unfair disadvantage.
How can we adapt the design education system to benefit from this global change?
To begin with, we will probably have to define precise quality criteria for training courses leading to bachelors and masters degrees. Indeed, to this day there is no international recognition for training courses in design, no Equis or AACSB accreditation system to set the rules of an international standard. For several years now, designers have strived – without success – to be acknowledged by the International Labour Office and the European Union. The heterogeneity of practices makes it difficult for us to achieve our goals. However, it is the responsibility of education institutions to implement this standardization and that of Cumulus to take part in the process. This is the only way to achieve official recognition of the profession of designer that would allow design education institutions to guarantee long-term quality training courses.
Nowadays high-reaching opportunities are opening up for design schools. After the industrial revolution sparked off by ICT (information and communication technologies), the next revolution will be that of Sustainable Society. Designers are in the best position to face the challenges brought about by those upcoming changes. However a lot remains to be done. Schools must now adapt to globalization, to the emergence of economic culture in creation-oriented training courses and to a new competitive environment between education institutions. This competition compels us to better define our activities thanks to international standards, so that the profession of designer can gain permanent and irrevocable recognition.
