When the Bologna process started there were considerable fears in the UK that many features of our university system would not survive the harmonisation process.  The last 3-4 years have been interesting in showing that it has been countries on the European mainland that have taken steps to move towards the UK structures, rather than the other way round.  I have been called on in the past to give advice to two German universities to give advice on how to introduce bachelors degrees in my own subject.  (One of those universities actually decided that it was too difficult to do so and closed down the department instead!)  Today I spent an hour on the phone answering questions posed to me by a colleague in a French university, about how governance structures work here.

My whole acacdemic career has been based on the undertaking of comparative studies.  I know how difficult they can be.  The funding of French universities is very different from ours - there is no intermediate agency like the Higher Education Funding Council between the ministry and institutions.  There is therefore no role for a body like the University Council here.  That is very different in other coutnries: in the Netherlands, for example, the University Chair is as important as the Rector Magnificus (the equivalent of our Vice-Chancellor).

The French system is interesting beacuse it is very difficult for a university like ouirs to strike up alliances with individual institutions there.  A result of the 1968 unrest was the breaking up of many universities into separate fragments - often consisting of a single faculty.  I have recently examined PhDs in both the Paris universities with significant Geography departments (Paris I and Paris VII). Other Paris universities exist for Law, or for Medicine, with no other subject represented. Were Sheffield to want to strike up a strategic partnership with a Parisian institution we would be limited to a very small part of our own wide portfolio.  Therefore it was interesting today to hear from my French colleague that in the city where his university is situated there is now a vision to re-merge the three universities that were split from one after 1968.  That would make an institution that would look much more like ours, or like universities in Germany, the Netherlands or Portugal (other countries that I have had close connections with). 

I am convinced that we need to create much stronger international connections for our university.  Changes throughout Europe are making that much easier for us by adapting structures.  Where the gap now lies is in many embedded cultural attitides within our own coutnry.  Theyt might be harder to tackle.