Changes in Higher Education in European Peripheries and Their Contexts: Poland, Norway, and Europe

Abstract

In general higher education in Central Europe, Poland included, is one of those social areas that have been exposed to various reform attempts following the collapse of communism in 1989. Reforms in the region throughout the two decades were intended, implicitly or explicitly, to bring Central European academics and students back into what was regarded to be the European higher education community of academics and students. Reform attempts were led by specific, regional post-communist concerns inspired by national higher education developments observed in Western Europe. Clearly national and regional reference points in reforms were accompanied by European reference points, especially when the Bologna Process started at the turn of the century and when this European intergovernmental initiative was used in national contexts in the region as a useful justification for further reforms.