What will the students say?

Business schools across Europe have been launching new masters programmes to meet the opportunities opened up by the higher education reforms known as the Bologna process.

Bologna is supposed to make cross-border study easier by making the higher education structures in different European countries more compatible. While it promises significant change in the business education landscape, the scale of that change will be determined by what the students want - an as yet unknown quantity.

The most significant effect of the Bologna reforms has been to harmonise the structure of higher education into three cycles, similar to the Anglo-American model: students first complete a bachelor degree, then a masters, then a doctorate. Each level is intended to be an end point, at which a student can either enter employment or continue his or her education, whether at the same institution, or another at home or abroad.

This amounts to major change for universities on mainland Europe, where the divide between a bachelor degree and a masters cuts through the traditional long degree which students took before entering employment or embarking on an academic career with a PhD. It is clearly also an opportunity for institutions to launch new masters courses to attract students from home and abroad.

A report compiled in 2005 by the Graduate Management Admission Council predicted that the Bologna reforms would result in 12,000 new business-oriented masters degrees competing for students. "It is still a bit too early to make confident statements in terms of numbers, but there is nothing to say that our estimates are way off," says Jeanette Purcell, a member of the panel which wrote the GMAC report.

Purcell is chief executive of the Association of MBAs, an organisation that accredits business masters courses in 62 countries around the world. She has seen many business schools trying to anticipate the effect of the Bologna reforms. "They are interested in the completely new market of students coming out after a three- or four-year bachelor programme in different disciplines, but looking for something to get them into work quickly. A masters in management is ideal for these students."

There has also been growth in the number of specialist masters programmes, for instance in marketing strategy, international finance or human resources. These can be clearly branded and promoted to students, particularly as a complement to a general bachelor degree in management. Equally, as students defer their masters until after they have gained significant work experience, the market for MBAs is also opening up.

But while continental business schools appear to have embraced the new masters, their attitude to the first cycle is less progressive. "I don’t think yet that most providers have really got to grips with seeing the first cycle as a terminal qualification," explains Jonathan Slack, chief executive of the UK Association of Business Schools and vice president of Equal, an association of quality assessment agencies dealing with European management education. "They still see it as an overall learning experience where they expect most students to go through to the masters level."

Students may see things differently, according to a survey carried out this year by the European Foundation for Manage-ment Development. Only half of the respondents (most of whom were studying business and economics) said they would go straight on to a masters, while a quarter were sure they would work first before returning to education. A third of respondents said they planned to change the country in which they study.

According to Slack, the evidence from the countries furthest down the Bologna route is that these attitudes are followed through, particularly where students welcome the opportunity at the masters stage for a more international experience.

Purcell also sees student behaviour as decisive. "I suspect in the first two or three years students will behave quite cautiously, and most students graduating from a new bachelors programme will probably opt to stay at that university to do a masters. But when things settle down I think it’s more likely that students will choose to go elsewhere for their masters, perhaps to a different country."

A further challenge for the continental business schools is the length of the masters course on offer. "A masters can last one or two years," explains Purcell, "and students are quite understandably asking why they would do a two-year masters in one institution when they can do it in one year elsewhere, notably in the UK."

• Ian Mundell is a freelance journalist based in Brussels.

Business schools across Europe have been launching new masters programmes to meet the opportunities opened up by the higher education reforms known as the Bologna process.