The global market for diplomas and academic rankings has had the
unintended consequence of stimulating misconduct, from data manipulation
and plagiarism, to sheer fraud. If incentives for integrity prove too
hard to create, then at least some of the reasons for cheating must be
obliterated through an acknowledgement of the problem in Europe-wide
policy initiatives.
At the Second World Conference on the Right to
Education this week in Brussels, we shall propose that the next
ministerial communiqué of the Bologna Process in 2015 includes a clear
reference to integrity as a principle. The Bologna Process is an
agreement between European countries that ensures comparability in the
standards and quality of higher-education qualifications.
Furthermore,
the revised version of the European Standards and Guidelines for
Quality Assurance, to be adopted by the 47 Bologna Process ministers in
2015, should include a standard that is linked to academic integrity
(with substantive indicators), which could be added to all national and
institutional quality-assurance systems.
We believe that an
organization such as the Council of Europe has enforcement capabilities
that can create momentum for peer pressure and encourage integrity. A
standard-setting text, such as a recommendation by the Council of
Ministers, or even a convention on this topic, would be timely given the
deepening lack of public trust in higher-education credentials.
We
do not expect that a few new international rules alone can change much.
But we aim to create ways for institutions to become entrepreneurs of
integrity in their own countries, as some models already exist ( and Int. J. Educ. Dev. 31, 532–546; 2011).
