Structural Changes in the Polish Higher Education System (1990-2010): A Synthetic View (CPP RPS 86/2014)

Abstract

The paper focuses on changes in governance, management, funding, and the academic profession in the last two decades in Poland. A recent wave of reforms (2009-2012) is analyzed, with its impact on further structural transformations. The paper locates the changes in comparative European contexts. The paper shows a wider transition from an expanding, privatized and disciplinarily-divided university of the 1990s to a publicly-funded, contracting and stratified university (ever more socially and economically relevant) of the 2000s and beyond. The scope of changes and their speed are not comprehensible outside of the context of the overall postcommunist transition to an open, market-driven economy. The gradual political, economic and social integration of Poland with the European Union has been accompanied by the deepened, gradual integration with Western European higher education and research systems, both involved in deepened European integration processes.