European Lawyers Association
Antwerpen, Thursday 19 November 2009
At the annual ELA conference in Antwerp on the issues of corruption and competition, we presented our view that, regarding the combat against corruption in higher education, a strict Bologna policy should be developed and implemented to prevent fraud in financing systems, and that corruption and buying access or even diploma’s, should be severely punished by the academic community itself.
After a general introduction on funding principles and methods, the focus was a achieving an international system that is founded on better cooperation and justified mutual trust:
“Corruption and fraud undermines the fundament of the EU Bologna process and subsequently the basic functioning of the free EU market (free moving of people, services and labour). The Bologna process is fully based on mutual trust. If this trust is violated, sanctions must be taken, also to give the strongest signal how important the fight against corruption is. The worldwide BaMa systems in the open national educational markets make it even more difficult to control bogus institutions and bogus degrees than ever before. Also for this reason governments, the EU, must act rapidly, as otherwise the success of Bologna will cause its breakdown just a little later.
The excuse that corruption is a matter of tradition or a trading culture is not acceptable as is will lead to the undermining and eventual collapse of our own carefully built modern educational and societal systems that are based on (academic) merit and not on money and power. Consequently, the societal context of corruption is irrelevant; a joint 0-tolerance policy is the only way. A fair funding system helps to achieve this goal.
The question is if the less corrupt economic areas of the world, notably the countries of the EU and OECD, are politically strong enough to develop and enforce clean academic policies.
It should be advised that, if a more substantial systemic corruption is found in a country, a university, a curriculum, the international withdrawal of recognition, accreditation, must be considered and thus legally possible. In the EU area, the EU citizenship delimits the possibility of sanctions. Nonetheless, the loss of accreditation of a curriculum should be the result of systemic corruption. This also implies that the diploma’s of that institution are not recognised in her own country and neither in EU.
In the EU HE area, comprised of 47 countries, it is different. In the non EU countries of this area, corruption should lead to a EU-wide embargo on the recognition of diploma’s of those systems, institutions, and/or programmes.
This is not punishing the student as he or she can study abroad to upgrade his/her diploma. It is punishing dishonest systems, bogus institutions an bonus degrees and stimulate countries to put an end to pervert practices, rather that to adapt to them and reward bad behaviour, to keeping upright and further a system of granting diplomas that cannot be trusted.
Advanced systems will collapse if they reward corrupt standards. Corrupt cultures and traditions, should you believe this exists, will be encouraged to continue its existence and people trying to combat this are left alone. Corruption is not an inevitable fact of life, not the hand of God.”
A full article on the issue will appear in the International Journal for Education Law and Policy in 2010
