Qualifications Frameworks and their conflicting social imaginaries of globalisation

Critics of the European Bologna process often see it as a univocal standardization of higher education. By exploring how different qualifications frameworks currently project unlike imaginaries of and responses to globalisation, this article takes a different stance. As a key point, I argue that the well-known imaginary of globalisation as a change towards a more diverse and unforeseeable world, which calls for the development of flexible, lifelong learners with a broad knowledge base and strong democratic competencies that we find in the overarching qualifications framework of the Bologna process, is a highly contested imaginary. In contrast, for example, the Danish qualifications framework of 2003 projects an imaginary of globalisation as a change towards a smaller and more predictable world, which enables a novel and more efficient alignment of the curriculum towards specific professional needs, whereas the development of a broad knowledge base and democratic competencies are no longer prioritised.