The Vanishing Sector. A Case Study on Private Higher Education Institutions in Poland (original) (raw)
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In: Marek Kwiek and Peter Maassen (eds.), National Higher Education Reforms in a European Context: Comparative Reflections on Poland and Norway. Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang. 2012. 127-154., 2012
The paper links several interrelated processes in Central and Eastern European higher education: expansion through two types of privatization (external: new private providers, and internal, public universities charging fees in a nominally free public sector), severe fiscal constraints limiting further tax-based growth of higher education, and the gradual denigration of the research mission of universities caused by almost two decades of their continuous focus on the teaching mission and by general underfunding of university research in the region. Long-term consequences of the unprecedented growth of the private sector in Poland in the two decades of 1990-2010 are studied, with special emphasis on the consequences of accompanying processes of the deinstitutionalization of the university research mission taking place in public universities: the decreasing role of traditional academic institutional rules and norms and traditional institutional patterns of academic behavior in Polish universities in the period. A new wave of reforms in Poland (2008-2011) is discussed, as possibly leading to substantially revised rules, norms and patterns of institutional behavior. Poland, with 31.5% of student enrollments in the private sector in 2010 (out of 1.84 million students), provides a unique case to study the two decades of demand-absorbing growth of private higher education with all its advantages and, as mostly discussed in the present chapter, limitations. The overall context of the chapter is the emphasis on further expansion of higher education in Europe argued for by both knowledge economy theories and (repeatedly) by the European Commission policy documents, with a policy wish to close the enrollment gap between the European Union and the USA. Finally, the chapter presents conclusions and directions for further research. Experimenting with privatization in higher education, substantially increasing access to it in the last ten to fifteen years, were especially strong in Central European systems, Poland being the biggest system in the region and the most notable example. New “public-private dynamics” (Enders and Jongbloed 2007), in various forms, emerges in Europe and the chapter focuses on those systems which have used privatization processes for the expansion of their higher education in the context of increasingly competitive public funding for all public services generally, not only for higher education. Especially, the chapter studies the long-term consequences of the expansion through privatization for the system as a whole and for public sector institutions.
Changing Public-Private Dynamics in Polish Higher Education
International Higher Education. No. 86 (Summer 2016). 18-20., 2016
The public–private dynamics in systematically contracting Polish higher education has been changing rapidly. In the global context of the increasing reliance on cost-sharing mechanisms and the private sector growth, the Polish system seems to be moving in the opposite direction as our data show. The Polish trend of higher education de-privatization (in funding and enrolments) goes against the global trend of its privatization. The Polish case shows how fragile private higher education is when its dominating demand-absorbing subsector is confronted with a double challenge of changing demographics and massive public financing in the public sector.
2016
This study analyses how different types of system-level (or ‘landscape’) structural reforms in higher education have been designed and implemented in selected higher education systems. In the 12 case studies that form the core of the project, the researchers examine reforms aimed at:• Increasing horizontal differentiation between different types of higher education institutions (for example reforms to introduce or modify the role of universities of applied science);• Increasing vertical differentiation through increasing or decreasing positional or status differences between higher education institutions (for example, reforms aimed at concentrating research in a limited number of universities) and;• Changing institutional interrelationships between higher education institutions (for example, through mergers, the formation of associations of institutions).In each case, the researchers set out to understand the origins and objectives of the reforms examined, the why they were designed...
The Rise of Private Higher Education in Poland: Policies, Markets and Strategies
Duczmal Alle rechten voorbehouden. Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden verveelvoudigd, opgeslagen in een geautomatiseerd gegevensbestand, of openbaar gemaakt, in enige vorm of op enige wijze, hetzij elektronisch, mechanisch, door fotokopieën, opnamen of enig andere manier, zonder voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van de auteur. Voor zover het maken van kopieën uit deze uitgave is toegestaan op grond van artikel 16B Auteurswet 1912 j o , het besluit van 20 juni 1974, Stb. 351, zoals gewijzigd bij het Besluit van 23 augustus 1985, Stb. 471 en artikel 17 Auteurswet 1912, dient men de daarvoor wettelijk verschuldigde vergoedingen te voldoen aan de Stichting Reprorecht (Postbus 882, 1180 Amstelveen). Voor het overnemen van gedeelte(n) uit deze uitgave in bloemlezingen, readers en andere compilatiewerken (artikel 16 Auteurswet 1912) dient men zich tot de uitgever te wenden. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system of any nature, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying or recording, without prior written permission of the author.
Marketization, Privatization, and Declining Demographics: Their Impact on Polish Higher Education
The article discusses the increasing marketization and privatization processes in Polish higher education which have been taking place over the last 20 years. This has been spurred on by the dramatic growth of the private sector, the changing relationships between the public and private sectors, and long-term impacts of this relationship on academic norms and codes of behavior. The article considers the Central European private sector institutions as (OECD)-independent private‖ type of private higher education, generally inexistent in Western Europe. Further, expansion, marketization and privatization are discussed as dominating features of higher education transformation, as well as the future impact of declining demographics on the private sector. Finally, negative consequences of the laissefaire creation of the private sector in the 1990s Poland and its parasitic relationship to public universities are examined.
The robust privateness and publicness of higher education. Expansion through privatization in Poland
David Palfreyman, Ted Tapper and Scott Thomas, eds., Towards the Private Funding of Higher Education. Ideological and Political Struggles New York: Routledge , 2018
Privatization of higher education is closely linked to its expansion: when systems expand, there appears a fundamental question of how to fund them from the public purse. The growth of higher education in Poland under the communist regime (1945-1989), and especially in the 1970s and 1980s, was frozen: enrolments were stable and higher education was largely inaccessible. Privatization following the 1989 regime change had two crucial dimensions: ideological (accompanying massive privatizations in the economy in general) and financial (financial austerity affecting all public sector services). The financial dimension of privatization was more important, and it was accompanied by a general lack of interest in social policies from policy-makers in the midst of large-scale economic reforms. The two main types of privatization are external privatization (the booming private sector) and internal privatization (fee-paying courses in the nominally free public sector). ‘Education can be privatized if students enroll at private schools or if higher education is privately funded’ (Belfield andLevin, 2002:19); Poland provided examples of increasing private provision and increasing private funding in both sectors. Belfield and Levin (2002) argued that ‘the first factor to explain privatization in education is simple: many parents want it’ (p. 29). Polish students (and their parents) clearly wanted higher education; consequently, as elsewhere in Central Europe, ‘private higher education provide[d] stark solutions to the dilemma of how to keep expanding access while not expanding public budgets’ (Levy, 2008: 13).
Polish Private Higher Education, Politics, and Demographics
The global growth of private higher education included the last two decades of the sector's demand-absorbing growth in Poland. Poland is the 6th-largest higher education system in the European Union (1.9 million students), with the highest enrollments in the private sector in Europe (633,000 students and 33.3%, in 2009). After almost 20 years
Business and non-profit organizations facing increased competition and growing customers’ demands, Volume 17, Proceedings of the 17th Conference of Scientists and Business People Tomaszowice, Poland, 18-19 June 2018, Adam Nalepa, Anna Ujwary-Gil (red.), ISSN 2543-540X, pp. 127-142, 2018
Consolidations in Polish higher education have been developing since the 1990s, although in the first two decades they were rather incidental. Intensification of mergers of private higher education institutions has occurred in recent years under the influence of increased competition. In Poland, the consolidation processes of universities in the last 25 years have been spontaneous and of a bottom-up nature. They did not take the form of a merger wave and were not implemented systemically. Among several public-sector mergers, two were strategic in nature. In recent years the largest scale of consolidations has been among private universities, forced by a falling demand for education. The aim of the article is to describe the process of merging public universities in Poland. The research methodology in the article was based on the analysis of the merger of two Polish public universities. The article has a review nature and uses exemplification in the form of a case study and constitutes a starting point for further in-depth research in the field of university mergers in Poland. The article describes the importance of mergers between universities in an era of legal changes taking place in the Polish higher education system. The case study includes the merger of the Medical Academy in Cracow into the structure of the Jagiellonian University and as described in the article can be an exemplification of the federal merger process. Keywords: university mergers, public university, university management, higher education sector in Poland, Polish university
2009
Hard copies of the research papers are available upon request The Center for Public Policy Studies (CPP) is an autonomous research unit of Poznan University, Poland, founded in 2002. It focuses on research in social sciences, mostly through large-scale comparative European and international research projects. Its major areas of interest include: higher education policy and research in national, European and global perspectives; research and development policies; university management and governance; reforming higher education and its legislation in Central and Eastern Europe; higher education and regional development; public services; the processes of Europeanization and globalization; theories of the welfare state; theories of democracy, as well as political and economic transition in European postcommunist countries. See http://www.cpp.amu.edu.pl/htm. The CPP Research Papers Series is intended to disseminate the findings of work in progress and to communicate preliminary research results to the academic community and the wider audience. Papers are subject to further revisions and therefore all comments and suggestions to authors are welcome.
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