Changing higher education policies: From the deinstitutionalization to the reinstitutionalization of the research mission in Polish universities

Marek Kwiek

Science and Public Policy, 2012, vol. 39, issue 5, 641-654

Abstract: This paper analyzes changing higher education policies in Poland in the last two decades. It argues that top Polish public universities became divided, with different individual academic and institutional trajectories in the academic fields in which educational expansion occurred (social sciences) and in fields in which it was much less pronounced (natural sciences). Using the concepts drawn from new institutionalism in organizational studies, this paper views the 1990s as the period of the deinstitutionalization of traditional academic rules and norms in public universities, with growing uncertainty about the core of the academic identity. In the expansion era (1990--2005), prestigious public research universities became excessively teaching-oriented. In the period of educational contraction, their currently teaching-oriented segments are expected to become research-intensive. New legislation grounded in an instrumental view of higher education is interpreted as a return to a traditional academic normative consensus, with increased emphasis on, and funding for, the research mission. Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/scipol/scs042 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:scippl:v:39:y:2012:i:5:p:641-654

Access Statistics for this article

Science and Public Policy is currently edited by Nicoletta Corrocher, Jeong-Dong Lee, Mireille Matt and Nicholas Vonortas

More articles in Science and Public Policy from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().