Unfolding the Higher Education Package, Part 3 of 3
At the end of March 2024, the European Commission adopted a higher education package of proposals aimed at fostering greater transnational cooperation, boosting the quality and relevance of higher education, facilitating automatic recognition and promoting truly European learning opportunities.
In a series of three articles, we unfold how the blueprint for a European degree and the proposed Council Recommendation on a European quality assurance and recognition system try to achieve those aims. After the first article on the European degree and the second article on proposals on quality assurance, we conclude this series by looking at what is new in terms of automatic recognition.
Thus far, two main policy documents have shaped recognition policies and practices in the European area: the Lisbon Recognition Convention (LRC), a legally binding treaty signed and ratified by 56 states, and the 2018 Council Recommendation on automatic recognition, a non-binding recommendation that formally applies to the EU, but obviously serves as a benchmark also for candidates countries and beyond.
Despite the policy commitments, a feasibility study carried out in 2023 found that automatic recognition is still not a reality throughout the European Union, even for those cases where all prerequisites (quality assurance aligned with the ESG, national qualifications frameworks references against the EQF) are met.
The proposed new Council Recommendation aims to advance the goal of automatic recognition of qualifications and periods of study, in line with the 2018 Council Recommendation on promoting automatic mutual recognition.
The proposal emphasises the close link between quality assurance and automatic recognition: for example by citing the Database of External Quality Assurance Results (DEQAR) as an important tool and highlighting the potential of its integration into recognition processes, or by suggesting that quality assurance processes should take into account the implementation of automatic recognition by higher education institutions.
The proposal further recommends that EU Member States:
- develop clear guidance that clarifies the distinction between automatic recognition for access and the right of higher education institutions to define criteria for admission to specific programmes;
- support a learning outcomes approach in defining these admission criteria and processes – that is, to focus on competencies required from entrants to a programme and to make sure that admission processes are flexible and inclusive: they should be open to students entering with different prior qualifications from different institutions, having achieved comparable competences even if curricular details might look very different;
- leverage the European Digital Credentials for Learning (EDC) standards and encourage higher education institutions to issue their degrees as digital credentials – through EDC’s in-built checks of authenticity and proof of accreditation, this can be a key enabler of automatic recognition in practice;
- collect data to monitor recognition practice and support capacity building and cooperation between information centres (ENIC-NARICs), higher education institutions and quality assurance agencies.