The vocationalisation of university courses in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation

Souto Lopez, Miguel [UCL]

The French community in Belgium, now referred to as the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, joined the Bologna Process in 1999. In 2004, the Community government promulgated a decree referred to as being “from Bologna”, which introduces reforms to higher education to harmonise it with the European higher education framework. The reading of the decree suggests that university courses should now be more vocational at the graduate level for shorter courses, and at postgraduate level for longer courses. In other words, the university training provision is now to match the competence profiles that the employment market is expecting to see. This requirement for a vocational approach is indicative of the ever-growing influence of the economic arena on the university arena. This communication is intended to draw out figures other than the political ones who have been involved in negotiations to complete the drafting of the decree. More specifically, it is about seeing to what extent those outside the university arena alone have managed to influence what is available as far as university training is concerned, in order for this training to match the competence profiles that the employment market is expecting to see, from an economic perspective.