erm, the problem is not having convertible degrees (to a great extent, we had that BEFORE Bologna, btw). The problem is that Bologna is chaotic and has carried out changes in the educational programs that are pretty terrible, and I doubt very much that "standarization" outweights this. The way I hear it engineering has been hit the worst, although of that one I can only talk about the basics: the 5-year full engineering degree was suppressed, and made the technical engineering degree equivalent to the full one (which is bullshit for the ones that did the full one beforehand). As it stands now after the change, everyone does 3-year technical engineering degrees, and to get the equivalent of the full degree, they have to do a master's. The way I hear it it's a much messier affair than it used to be.
In medical school, which is a matter with which I'm more familiar, the changes have been bad as well: they reduced lecture hours in favor of practice hours, which might sound sweet and good, but is actually a terrible idea: practices in uni are, as a general rule 10% useful and 90% waste of time (and this is coming for someone who studied at an uni ranked in the top 100 by NYT, mind you. It stands to reason that elsewhere), and lecture-hours are often already saturated as it is. Reducing the latter in favor of the former means that you'll either have to rush through the course, or make it lighter (talking with medical students both from my uni and from elsewhere I get the impression that often both take place: they complain of professors going through the study material altogether too fast, while at the same time crucial study subjects are often missing).
On the plus side, they made it official (it was already acknowledged to be as such in practice) that a medical title carries by default a master's degree, which is a good thing I guess (it'd be even better if they widened it to include those of us who graduated just before the program change. There's work being done in that regard, we'll see.).
Anyway, onto more bad stuff: postgrad medical education: there's a troncality draft that with every passing review gets worse. There are a few good ideas in it (eg: cross specialization switching), but the implementation ideas are so fucking bad (the mandatory troncality is a mess. -There *is* already a less broken troncality in play. Why can't they acknowledge that instead of putting in this stuff?-, access to the programs is chaotic, and they are overall weaker) that MIR exam aspirants everywhere breathe in relief everytime it gets delayed.
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