Introduction

Since the very last years of the twentieth century, European universities have been undergoing transformations whose overall repercussions are still very difficult to assess. In the three decades after the end of the Second World War, the universities which had been an integral part of the welfare state were, on the whole, adapted to the aspirations of a society imbued with the dominant values of equality in educational opportunities and a non-utilitarian vision of higher-education. Since the mid-1980s new socioeconomic realities forced universities to new adaptations, and the Bologna declaration of 1999 became the symbolic beginning the beginning of a new period for the European universities. The Bologna process has brought about a rather distressful change in the European universities which now make up a more or less homogeneous whole, far removed from the varied and pluralistic institutions they used to be. There are many other aspects of the Bologna process that have been criticized. However, being critical of what the policies of the Bologna declaration brought about does not by any means imply that the situation existing before Bologna had been satisfactory. Surely one cannot assess such a complicated framework through checks and balances, though a serious systematic study of where the universities are heading is wanting.