Abstract
In most of the countries that belonged to the ex-Warsaw Pact and ex-Yugoslav Federation the transition from authoritarian to democratic systems, 30 years ago, has been accompanied by a specific, and almost common, legislative change related to the area of higher education. As a rule, the constitutions of these countries have been then enriched by articles guaranteeing, or at least stressing the importance, of academic freedom and university autonomy. On the contrary in the constitutions of countries from Old Europe with long democratic traditions such issues are rather rarely present. In last 30 years the higher educational institutions and policy makers from transitional countries passed through the demanding process of reforms aiming to bring them closer to the international standards. Was the mentioned constitutional protection the advantage or the drawback in this never lasting endeavour? The present paper contains some personal reflections on this topic, focusing particularly to constitutional inputs and their consequences in Croatia and Slovenia, two countries that were parts of Yugoslav Federation before its dissolution.
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Notes
- 1.
The reference (Constitute, 2021) contains the texts of all constitutions mentioned throughout this text.
- 2.
All these terms are today pejorative in the Croatian political and public space as far as Croatia is meant as a part. The substitute usually used for SFRY is former state.
- 3.
After the disruption of SFRY in early 1990s Serbia remained under an authoritarian regime, a combination of communism and radical nationalism led by Slobodan Milošević (Vladisavljević, 2008). In this period the position of higher education was additionally worsened after a series of legislative changes towards the elimination of university autonomy, and oppressive measures against professors who criticized the regime, that provoked a resolute reaction of academic community (Savić, 1997). The constitutional provisions guaranteeing academic values were adopted only few years after the fall of Milošević in 2000.
- 4.
Only in two post-Yugoslav constitutions the university autonomy is not mentioned at all. Both were written, or supervised, by external jurists. First one is that of Bosnia and Herzegovina, written as the annex to the Dayton agreement signed in December 1995 by the heads of world powers, and presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. Second is the constitution of Kosovo, written during the strong involvement of United Nations in searching the solutions of a long-standing conflict between Kosovo and Serbia.
- 5.
Still, this does not mean that there were no substantial differences among states regarding the circumstances and prerequisites that lead to such apparent univocality. We shall come back to this point later in the discussion of effects of constitutional impacts in the further development of HE in Croatia and Slovenia.
- 6.
The usual term used for this process is transition. Although, due to the complexity of these transformations from one, and due to the wider historical content of the term from the other side, it opens further questions (Zgaga, 2007, 2016), I use it here pragmatically as a shorthand one, designating all countries who belonged to the Warsaw Pact and SFRY before 1989.
- 7.
The partial exceptions are constitutions of Austria, Italy, Portugal, and Spain.
- 8.
In the Swiss Constitution, together with the basic declaration that “freedom of research and teaching is guaranteed”, the relatively new provision which is, as many others, the result of the referendum from 2006, describes in detail the duties and responsibilities of Confederation and Cantons in the foundation and funding of universities, the Federal Institutes of Technology in particular.
- 9.
Aside from general provisions on human rights, equivalent to those of Déclaration des droits de l’homme at du citoyen from 1789 which is still integral part of actual French Constitution, the U. S. Constitution does not cover the educational subjects, which are, through the 14th Amendment in particular, relegated to legislations of States.
- 10.
More precisely, university autonomy and academic freedom is declared explicitly in the constitutions of eight states (Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania). The remaining eight constitutions (those of Azerbeijan, Belarus, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Ukraine) contain only the protection of academic freedom. The latter is formulated in various wordings, usually as the freedom of scientific research, or simply as the freedom of creative work or expression, or even simpler, as the freedom of creativity.
- 11.
All states emerged from the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, and SFRY are national states, i.e. states in which a single nation is recognized as the constitutional holder of the state sovereignty. The only exception is Bosnia and Hezegovina in which the sovereignty is attributed to three nations (Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs) organized in a specific complex political configuration as provided by the Dayton Agreement.
- 12.
In the juridical jargon the term is legislative optimism.
- 13.
The counter example, which indicates that such constitutional approaches were primarily linked to national recoveries, and not to the transformation from the socialist economic planning to the free market economy, is the present Chinese political system. Regarding the position of universities and their autonomy, the formulations in the Chinese constitution do not differ from the those usually present in the constitutions of “people democracies”, irrespectively to the deep economic reforms undertaken in China in last few decades.
- 14.
Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Letonia, and Estonia; among these states Slovenia leads with the GDP of 25,992 US$, while Poland is last with 15,601 US$.
- 15.
Romania are Bulgaria are members of EU from 2007. Croatia, member of EU from 2013, with the GDP of 14,853 US$, is closest to the second group.
- 16.
Among the states which are not members of EU Russian Federation has the highest GDP (11,601 US$), while Ukraine with 3,707 US$ has the lowest European GDP.
- 17.
In the interval 2010–2018 the R&D Intensity for EU raised from 1.97% to 2.18%. For comparison, the R&D Intensity of the main global competitors of EU, USA and China is 2.84% (same in 2009) and 2.17% (1.5% in 2009) respectively. Two top countries are Israel (5.0%) and South Korea (4.81%) (World Bank, 2021a). The World R&D Intensity is about 1.7% (UNESCO, 2020).
- 18.
The most remarkable among them is the jump of three transitional states (Slovenia, Czech Republic, and Hungary) into the group with highest R&D intensities.
- 19.
The R&D investments in some of the states which are shifted to the lower groups, and have relatively large GDPs, are still among the highest in Europe, as measured by amounts per inhabitant or per researcher. Such examples are Luxemburg and Ireland, two countries with highest European GDPs, more than 115,000 US$ and more than 80,000 US$ respectively.
- 20.
Slovenia is here again the most successful among the transitional country and is placed as the fourth among all European countries.
- 21.
Slovenia and Croatia are the members of EU from 2004 and 2013, respectively.
- 22.
Which was mapped also to the Constitutional Court due to the presence of academic juridical experts in both.
- 23.
The last legislative attempt, the provision in the Law from 2003 by which the legal integration of universities shall be finished by the end of 2007, was stopped by the second intervention of the Constitutional Court from 2006 (CC Croatia, 2006), stating that such proposition “does not comply with the principle of the rule of law” and that it contains the unclear and undefined notion of “legal integration of universities”. The Court also pointed out that this provision “... violates the constitutionally guaranteed university autonomy, as it hinders universities independently to regulate their internal organisation with respect to the legal character of their integral parts”.
- 24.
The decision of the Constitutional Court in recent years dealt e.g. with rules of academic promotions, tuition fees, student assessment to studies, salaries of professors and rectors, conditions for the retirement of professors, the relationship between the university and vocational study programmes and between corresponding levels in the national qualification framework, even the prerogatives of national and university ethical councils, including the interventions into few concrete personal intra-university ethical procedures under way.
- 25.
Such debates were in various forms opened in other federal republics as well, including Croatia. The debate in Croatia however was not focused on universities, but mainly on the position of secondary schools, strongly and unsuccessfully opposing the elimination of gymnasiums that were inherited already from the Austro-Hungarian times, and enabled a general preparation of pupils for future studies. Gymnasiums were re-established everywhere immediately after the formation of new post-Yugoslav states.
- 26.
Recently the Slovenian Constitutional Court issued the decision with the instruction that the actual Act on Higher Education should unambiguously state that universities are mere legal entities in the Slovenian HE system (CC Slovenia, 2021). This decision was motivated by the demand of Slovenian Audit Court to clarify some aspects of financial, administrative and audit procedures that involves universities and their institutional units.
- 27.
To my best knowledge, in other ex-Yugoslav states constitutional courts did not intervene into the issue of legal entities. Like Croatian universities, Serbian and Bosnian & Hercegovian universities still inherit the self-managerial model, while Montenegrin and North Macedonian universities made some shifts towards their legal integration.
- 28.
… which was, hélas, devoid of the fundamental Kantonian meaning (Kant, 1798).
- 29.
Quite generally, the creativity, i.e. the individual effort to protect conditions for successful research is the primary value any scientist tries to protect. Next in line is robustness of teachers and students in inconvenient conditions.
- 30.
In other words, there is no crisis of infected lifeblood per se. Infected lifeblood inevitably causes an organic crisis, crisis of the body.
- 31.
Historically the EU policy in the HE and R&D sectors was always the mixture of recommendations and targeted competitive and aiding funding aimed to encourage adequate shifts in national policies. HE and R&D are not regulated through strict and obligatory rules and commitments of member countries, as this is the case with other sectors like finances, market competition, juridical system, human rights, agriculture, environment, security of borders, etc.
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Acknowledgements
Being honoured by the opportunity to contribute to the Zeitschrift dedicated to him, I am particularly grateful to Pavel Zgaga for inspiring correspondence and numerous useful advises during the work on this manuscript. I am also grateful to Sjur Bergan, Anne Corbett, Manja Klemenčič and Srbijanka Turajlić for their suggestions, comments, help with literature, friendly encouragements, etc.
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Bjeliš, A. (2022). Higher Education in Two Countries from ex-Yugoslav Federation: 30 Years of Constitutional Embracement. In: Klemenčič, M. (eds) From Actors to Reforms in European Higher Education. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 58. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09400-2_8
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