As a result of the Bologna education reforms, more Swiss students are completing a Bachelor’s degree – and quicker. Most of those go on to complete a Masters.

More than 90 per cent of students are now part of the “Bologna system”, said the Federal Statistics Office on Wednesday.

The Bologna Process was launched in 1999 by 29 European countries, including Switzerland, and now has 47 participating countries. It was designed, in part, to facilitate moving between countries for study within a greater European system.

That has raised some problems in places like Switzerland, where higher education is carried out at three different types of schools: universities, specialised technical institutions and teacher training colleges, each with various requirements. 

However, the Statistics Office pointed out on Wednesday that three-quarters of university students who started their course in 2003 had achieved a Bachelors degree by 2009. With traditional studies only two-thirds had a degree or diploma ten years after starting their course.

While 90 per cent of university graduates start a Masters – with the rest going into the job market – only a fifth and sixth of graduates did so at specialised technical institutions and teacher training colleges respectively.

Of Masters students, a third did their Bachelors at a different institution and a fifth come from abroad.

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