Russian engagement with the Bologna Process: policies and practices in higher education reform

Abstract

The Bologna process describes a collaboration of countries from Europe to Central Asia, where state actors and institutions work towards system convergence in higher education and define an international common space of education policy. This thesis provides a critical reflection on international higher education policymaking and reform implementation through the lens of the Russian engagement with Bologna, contributing to literature in the anthropology of “policy as a practice of power”, and contributing to studies of higher education.

Drawing on seven months of fieldwork in Moscow in 2010-11, and from a corpus of European and Russian legislation, education policy documents and university surveys, the thesis explores Bologna as an international sociocultural normative effort, and reveals practices of power that emerge during Russia’s engagement with Bologna.

The chapters offer an ethnographic look at Russian actors’ engagement with Bologna, highlighting their roles inside the institutions, their discursive production, network mobility, and the kinds of agencies that thrive inside the Bologna process. I follow the implementation of the European Credit Transfer System higher education standard by a Moscow university, and illuminate practices of segregation inside the institution that limit the appropriation of Bologna’s Social Dimension policies. Through such explorations the thesis shows regimes of power in the Bologna process, practices that strengthen Bologna’s governance model and establish the legitimacy of its policies, and the emergence of political and institutional hegemonies. I also show negotiation practices that emerge during the appropriation of Bologna’s policies, modifying or challenging these educational norms.