Abstract:

In the absence of an academic or generally agreed definition on the term of the term politicization Hooghe and Marks [1] call it in the following form: “Politicization refers to the increasing contentiousness of decision making in the process of regional integration”. On this base, we have analyzed how one of the main axes of the European integration, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), epitomized by the Process of Bologna, has been the result of frequent critical since this process was initiated in 1999, which question their true purposes for considering it more oriented to the creation of individuals close to one particular ideology (Left/Right politicization), which at the achievement of the academic excellence in the European universities.

Most often, this process has been accused of being highly politicized for constituting a slope of Neoliberalism that has degenerated into an ambiguous “academic capitalism”: In the same way that A. Smith pointed to an “invisible hand” that rules the dictates of the Economy, critics of the Bologna Process usually conclude that it is precisely the same entity that is guiding the formation of the new European university generations in base, not only to academic or formative criteria, but simply economic ones, giving rise to a “monetarization” of the Academy.

Although most of the detractors of this process, accuse it of responding to non-educational class interests, also start from a series of specific political postulates (contrary to Neoliberalism), they have no lack of reason when even UNESCO has recognized this the matter (see Crosier and Parveva [2]). This research objective is pointing out the main criticisms related to the Bologna Process, that is, its supposed politicization that affect such essential aspects of University Education as, among others, the employability, the formation of really critical mentalities, the sustainability of educational budgets, the “elitization” and/or banalization of university centers, the plausible discrimination of researchers according to their origin or the convergence of quality standards at national and European level. As methodology, we have employed various bibliometric procedures to describe which are the elements on the which underlies the politicization of the process, using as point of reference the Postfunctionalist Theory. As a result, in this paper, those ideological perspectives which argue that, in one sense or another, the process of Bologna is more to the service of one ideology in particular that in the creation of future freethinking minds, have been summarized.

In this work, the aims of the Bologna Process are not in doubt, but only a series of intrinsic limitations which, objectively, distort its scope. This, like any other process, has to learn from its own errors through a continuous feedback that does not deviate from its final objectives, being here our main contribution.

Keywords:

Politicization, Neoliberalism, Elitization, University Budgets, Bolonia Process.