At the centre of the Bologna process: Do European universities train their students to face knowledge-based societies

It is generally agreed that the two main functions of universities are to transmit high level knowledge and to produce new knowledge. For centuries, these two functions have been performed in a context where only a small share of an age cohort attended higher education institutions. After the Second World War, this context changed radically, when higher education began to face a more or less continuous growth, this led to a situation where, in the developed economies, more than 40 % of the young generation attended third level institutions (cf. TEICHLER, 2000). This evolution has corresponded to the necessity to train young people for a diversity of careers and professions that appeared with the development of economies during the XXth century. Nevertheless, the permanent and stable growth enabled the well-established contents of jobs to continue. The traditional assembly-line organisation of work relied on both submitted workers with narrow predefined tasks and on managers using well-established frameworks learned at schools. Professionals evolved in structured and planned environment, based on a predictable demand. The present knowledge-based economy imposes new challenges on higher education, which can be made explicit with reference to the characteristics of this new environment. The main purpose of this paper is to assess to what extent universities are ready to face challenges imposed by knowledge-base economies. This issue can be studied in taking into account At the Centre of the Bologna Process... Jean-Jacques Pau