The Geopolitics of the Bologna Process. Framings of Russia's 'Withdrawal' by Russian Academics

• In Event: Geo-political Shifts, Freedom and Disaster: the University in a new Spatio-temporal Era

Proposal

This paper examines changes in Russian higher education after the 2022 decision to withdraw from the Bologna process that Russia joined in 2003 (Leskina, 2021). The paper focuses on the waning of the internationalizing impact of the Bologna Process on Russian higher education, and the growing emphasis on local (Russian, Soviet) educational traditions. However, the outlines of the new system based on “national interests”, promised by Russia’s science and higher education minister in May 2022, remain vague. Debates about the future nature of higher education in the country proceed in the legislative assembly, the government, and the media. The current paper analyzes how the concept of the Bologna Process in higher education has been discussed by the Russian academic community in the professional journals over the past few years, that is, since the decision in 2022 to withdraw from the Bologna agreement. In particular, the article delves into the responses of the Russian academic community to the decision and examines the issues that the academics bring up, and how. We address empirical questions such as how the representatives of the academic community frame Russian higher education vis-a-vis the 'others'? How do they place Russian higher education in relation to the other systems? How do they emphasize the 'national' character of the Russian system vs. the 'international' (Mäkinen, 2021)?

Using frame analysis (Author et al 2023) we intend to access the collective framing of this key HE policy, and the ways in which geopolitical and neonationalist framings are (or are not) brought into the rationalisation of this otherwise unexpected and wide-ranging decision. In our prior research on the English language examination in Russian schools (Author et al, 2023) we have found that towards the end of the 2020’s negative aspects of the English language have started to dominate the public discussion. These included frames such as the following: common national identity and ‘traditional Russian’ moral values; curricula as a means of constructing uniformity and patriotism; the volume of the foreign language studies threatening the mastering of the Russian language; the risk of letting foreign stakeholders shape national education policy; ambition for more state control over teachers, curricula, and textbooks; less need for knowledge of foreign languages; growing incompatibility between certain educational policies and threats to the national interests of Russia; and importance of considering the national security strategy also in educational matters. We use these frames as a starting point in the analysis of the academic discussion to examine how these or other manifest in the case of the Bologna process in higher education. We also analyze if (some of) the detected frames are more universal and appear across levels of education and groups of actors.

Theoretically, our discussion is framed by debates on (neo)nationalism and its manifestation in higher education (Douglass, 2021), (geo)politics of higher education (Moscovitz & Sabzalieva, 2023; Koch, 2014; Mäkinen, 2023) as well as the ambiguous role of academic personnel as enactors of education policy in an authoritarian educational context (Gataulina, 2024; Zavadskaya & Gerber, 2023).

Author

• Nelli Piattoeva, Tampere University