MPs issue Master's protection order

The future of UK Master's degrees is at risk according to a House of Commons education and skills committee enquiry into the Bologna Process, under which 45 European countries have agreed to align their higher education systems. The committee's report, published on April 30th, fears that the intended mechanism for comparing awards from different countries will unfairly disadvantage both the one-year MSc and four-year integrated Master's such as the MEng*. ECUK expressed exactly this view in its submission to the enquiry.

The proposed mechanism for assessing qualifications is the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), which is based purely on input or hours studied. The committee's report condemns it as "not fit for purpose" and calls for the government to lobby for its reform, which ECUK has also been urging. The next ministerial meeting on Bologna, which the UK is hosting from May 16th to 18th, will provide a perfect opportunity to do this.

Like the committee, ECUK believes that the UK should develop proposals for an alternative to the ECTS that is based on learning outcomes. Indeed, it has offered to share the results of its own work on the EUR-ACE project, in which engineering bodies from a number of European countries are involved. EUR-ACE uses outcomes as the basis for assessing engineering degrees, thereby enabling the scope and level of the learning to be compared, rather than just notional workloads. This approach is already used by the UK engineering profession when accrediting engineering degrees.

"MEng and MSc degrees from UK universities are very popular and graduates that hold them are snapped up by employers", says ECUK's Director of Formation Richard Shearman, "The potential effects of Bologna on these awards need to be fully debated. And the government and its agencies - including the funding bodies - must be involved in that debate.  It can't just be left to the universities and professional bodies to resolve."