The Bologna Process and Its Relevance to Present-Day Education

Overview & Synopsis

On 19 September 2003 in Berlin, V.M. Filippov, the minister of education of the Russian Federation, signed an agreement by which their country joined the Bologna Declaration, which calls for the creation of a unified, Europe-wide system of higher education. One explanation for this turn of events in the transformation of education in Russia has to do with the objective necessity of "becoming a part" of the world educational domain. It is a circumstance that has been stipulated for a long time in their legislative documents on education, and now very specific (including legal) circumstances make it essential that they join the Bologna Process. The Bologna Process orients institutions of higher learning toward the goal-directed accomplishment of the tasks of the creative development of the individual (specifically an individual who has a profession) and, indispensably, the citizen. It spells out very clearly the role that the universities must play in this era of the democratization of society, as a necessary condition of that process (education that is open and accessible to everyone); it emphasizes the vitally important function of education (that of harmonizing nature and human activities), the civic aims and responsibility of education, and its role as a civilizing value (the preservation of the traditions of European humanism and the development of cultural values).