France seeks to standardise EU higher learning

"I have a dream," the French Education Minister, Mr Claude Allegre, told a colloquium at the Sorbonne. "I dreamed that our children and grandchildren will be able to use diplomas from Oxford, Florence, Heidelberg, Paris . . . and all these diplomas will constitute the European curriculum."

France offers 13 different university degrees - a system which Mr Allegre admits is "unintelligble" to the rest of the world. In their joint declaration on "the harmonisation of the architecture of the European system of higher learning", Mr Allegre, the German, British and Italian ministers of education promised to establish EU-wide norms for curriculums and diplomas, compatible with the US system.

Based on credits and semesters, the length of studies will be standardised: three years for a bachelor's degree, five years for a master's and eight years for a doctor ate. The ministers want to break down barriers to the movement of students and professors and called for a computer network to link university libraries across the EU.

The meeting also marked the 800th anniversary of the Sorbonne. Thanking the University of Paris for the honorary doctorates they received, the three visiting ministers spoke - in French - of the necessity of building "a Europe of knowledge".

Because France, Germany, Britain and Italy are reforming their university systems, it makes sense for them to co-operate, but the fact that their initiative was taken outside the EU Commission is damning.

The closing declaration appealed to all European countries and universities "to join us in this objective, to consolidate the place of Europe in the world by improving and continually updating the education of our citizens".

The colloquium, "Towards a European University", gave France's ruling Socialists a chance to emphasise their priorities for ope. The Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, told the professors who participated: "You will make more of this Europe . . . than a place built on monetary or economic `convergence criteria'. You will make it a union of citizens, founded on the criteria of human, social and cultural values."

Ironically, France has been singled out by the EU Commission for unnecessarily harassing visiting European students with administrative red tape.

Mr Allegre says he wants to renew "the free and itinerant spirit of the medieval student". In the late 12th century, when the theological colleges which were to become Europe's first universities were established in Paris, Oxford and Bologna, students and professors could move between institutions because they all spoke Latin.

Mr Allegre blamed wars of religion for turning universities in upon themselves. "If we could reunite them at the time when the last war of religion, in Ireland, is ending, it would be wonderful," he added.