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Higher Education Governance in Poland: Reform Pathway from the Communist Regime to Law 2.0

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Abstract

This article develops a country case study on the Polish higher education (HE) system governance regime by using the governance equalizer model to analyse how each reform over the last three decades has altered its formal power structure. In particular, we focus on the most recent HE governance reform (Law 2.0), which has not yet been addressed from a system governance perspective. Findings show Poland’s enduring unfitness in any ideal-type HE governance theoretical framework. Despite a series of reforms, the Polish power-sharing arrangement is still a compromise that combines the preferences of policymakers towards the market model with the legacy of the institutionalized, deeply-entrenched, and change-resistant academic self-governance model reintroduced in 1990. Thus, even after Law 2.0, Polish HE system governance is still stuck at a crossroads of academic self-governance and market models because the past is constraining feasible policy alternatives and new policies are adapted to existing principles.

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Notes

  1. In compliance with previous literature (e.g. Clark, 1983; Dobbins and Khachatryan, 2015), we consider as ideal-types: (1) state-control, (2) academic self-governance, and (3) market-oriented models.

  2. Process of breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualizing and categorizing data.

  3. 1982 Act dismissed it as a consequence of the Solidarity movement (Solidarność), but following regulation (1985 amendment) re-introduced it.

  4. Post-doctoral title necessary to become associate professor in Polish universities.

  5. Previously it was set by discipline: medicine: 40; arts: 25; linguistics: 50; remaining: 60.

  6. Market ideal-type, NPM and quasi-market institutional logic overlap. Academic self-governance model overlaps with academic/professional institutional logic.

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Acknowledgements

Davide Donina gratefully acknowledges the support of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) through the Ulam Programme (agreement number PPN/ULM/2019/1/00128), within which this article was developed. Previous version was presented at the 3rd International Workshop on Public Policy (2022) in Budapest (Hungary). The authors thank participants as well as the editor Jeroen Huisman and anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

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  1. Department of Science and Higher Education Research, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Nicolaus Copernicus University (UMK), ul. Fosa Staromiejska 1a, 87-100, Toruń, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Poland

    Davide Donina & Marta Jaworska

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Donina, D., Jaworska, M. Higher Education Governance in Poland: Reform Pathway from the Communist Regime to Law 2.0. High Educ Policy 37, 40–58 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-022-00293-x

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