Universities and Knowledge Production in Central Europe

Abstract

The article discusses an East/West divide in Europe in university knowledge production. It argues that the communist and post-communist legacies in the four major Central European economies studied (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic) matter substantially for educational and research systems. The differences in university knowledge production may be bigger than expected, and the role of historical legacies may be more long term than generally assumed in both social sciences and public policy studies on the region. The gradual convergence of both higher education and research systems in two parts of Europe cannot be taken for granted without thoughtful changes in both university funding (both modes and levels) and governance. The article discusses links between knowledge production, economic competitiveness and regulatory and other environments in which both universities and knowledge-intensive companies operate. The role of factors other than higher education and innovation systems is substantially more important for competitiveness and growth in Central Europe than in affluent Western economies. The international visibility of universities as knowledge production centres is low and the analysis of the geography of knowledge production at the level of regions may indicate that Central Europe is in danger of being effectively cut off from the emergent European Research Area.

From System Expansion to System Contraction: Access to Higher Education in Poland

“…Access to higher education in Poland has been intertwined with public/ private dynamics (Duczmal and Jongbloed 2007;Kwiek 2008Kwiek , 2011Kwiek , 2012b. The biggest private higher education system in Europe ("independent private" in OECD statistical terms, fee based in practical terms) may be heavily dependent for its future survival on a change in higher education financingnamely, the introduction of universal fees (for both full-time and part-time students) in the public sector.…”

Academic generations and academic work: patterns of attitudes, behaviors, and research productivity of Polish academics after 1989

“…One was socialized to academia under the communist regime and the other entered the profession in the post-1989 transition period leading to a market economy. While in Western European systems, the nature of generational changes in the last few decades was linked predominantly to reforms in university funding and governance (Enders and de Weert 2009;Teichler, Arimoto, and Cummings 2013); in Poland, as elsewhere in post-communist Central Europe, and it was also additionally linked to wider structural socio-economic changes (Kwiek 2012b). Poland became a market economy, an OECD (1996), NATO (1999), and a European Union (2004) member state, with a GDP per capita rising about three times over the last two decades, from 6300 euro (1995) to 11,500 euro (2005) to 17,500 euro (2013), and has had uninterrupted economic growth since 1990.…”

Structural changes in the Polish higher education system (1990–2010): a synthetic view

“…The growing concentration of research funding, talents and opportunities has been clear throughout the last two decades. With new research funding mechanisms and the increasing effect of competition, further stratification of the university sector seems unavoidable and is consistent with developments across Europe (Kwiek 2012c(Kwiek , 2013a.…”