The Bologna Trap: How the Standardization of Universities Stifles Our Vitality

On Learning, Vitality, and Trauma in Higher Education

With the Bologna Process, the aim was to create comparability, transparency, and efficiency across European higher education. But what has been lost in this reform is what once made university education special: intellectual maturity, time for reflection, space for critical engagement — and above all, humanity.

Introduced starting in 1999, the reform sought to modularize study programs, harmonize Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees across Europe, and thus strengthen the “European Higher Education Area.” What sounds reasonable in theory, however, has turned out in practice as a profound alienation — from educational ideals, from the university as a living space, and from the needs of young people. Universities have become extensions of school desks — and studying a performance race.

Education or Functioning?

Instead of enabling students to critically engage with the world and themselves, they are increasingly rushed through a tightly scheduled curriculum. It’s all about ECTS credits, exam regulations, deadlines, and performance checks — not about insight, not about transformation. In this logic, education is no longer an end in itself but a marketable qualification. Universities lose their soul — and students their connection to a deeper concept of education that involves personal development, maturation, and self-realization.

The Trauma Behind It: Control Instead of Trust

From a trauma-informed perspective, the standardization of universities expresses a collective need for control — and is thus a symptom of deeper societal trauma. Instead of trusting young people to shape their own educational journey with curiosity, responsibility, and intrinsic motivation, they are forced into a narrow corset. Behind this lies the fear of chaos, failure, uncertainty — exactly the aspects that are inevitable in a living learning process and that enable growth.

A standardized system mirrors central trauma dynamics: control instead of trust, conformity instead of unfolding, functioning instead of feeling. The system demands discipline and efficiency where resonance and exploration are actually needed. It overwhelms many students’ nervous systems without giving them time to integrate. Exam stress, chronic pressure, and the feeling of never being enough are not just side effects — they are systemic.

When Education Re-traumatizes

Many students already carry unintegrated childhood wounds — such as feeling lovable or safe only through achievement. A study system that perpetuates exactly these dynamics deepens existing wounds instead of healing them. Instead of offering a space for self-expression, the system reproduces conditions where adaptation triumphs over authenticity. This is not education — it is re-traumatization in academic disguise.

What We Need Instead

We need universities that become places of self-encounter again. Places where young people learn not how to “function” but who they are. We need educational spaces that foster error-friendliness, creativity, and emotional intelligence — not only measurable skills. Spaces where the nervous system can grow. Where learning happens not only cognitively but somatically and socially. Where the question is asked again: Who are you — and what wants to come through you into the world?

Conclusion

The Bologna reform was not progress but a structural intensification of a system that had already lost its center. The university was economized, standardized, and alienated. But beneath the surface lies a much deeper issue: our collective inability to deal with uncertainty, vitality, and true maturation.

As long as education means control instead of trust, it will not enable liberation. It’s time to rethink university — not as a career factory, but as a space for human becoming.

Annika Grieb

This post was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence. Responsibility for the content remains with the author.