Boom in Masters degrees predicted

Students will be freer to continue their studies in other countries

An agreement between European countries on converging higher education systems will lead to a big increase in Masters courses, it is predicted.

Forty European countries have signed up to the Bologna Accord, with changes due to be made in 2010.

The aim is to adjust their university courses so that degrees are comparable.

A report for the Graduate Management Admission Council predicts a bigger postgraduate market, with tens of thousands of new higher-level courses.

The report for the business school group says these will include 12,000 new business courses.

The Bologna Accord will bring participating countries in line with a British-style degree system, typically with a first degree taken over three or four years, plus a Masters taken over between one and two years.

In some European countries first degrees are taken over a longer cycle and are seen as a higher level qualification than Britain's BA or BSc.

In Germany, for example, a first degree is taken over four and half years and is seen as the equivalent of both a first degree and a Masters qualification.

The changes will see such qualifications broken down into parts which will be comparable across the relevant countries, so that in theory, mobility of students could be increased because they might choose to move to another country to continue their studies.

Competition

The Graduate Management Admission Council, which represents 138 business schools worldwide, says the Bologna Accord will create choice for a European pool of more than 2.4 million Bachelor graduates each year when in comes into full effect in 2010.

The organisation's president, David Wilson, said: "While in the UK there is already an educational model in which bachelor graduates enter the workforce; at present, no such model exists in the other Bologna signatory countries.

"After the accord is implemented, competition will increase exponentially.

"Schools that, to date, have had limited competition from the Continent will now find new players in the market - new schools, new programmes, new curricula and new countries."