Keywords
Central Europe
production of knowledge
global academic rankings
How to Cite
Abstract
The paper shows that four Central European economies (Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia) are not competitive on a global scale and that the reason is not only the fact that their systems of higher education, innovation and research lag behind those of the countries of Western Europe. The existing gap between the two parts of Europe is associated with many diverse factors and the combination of all of them has a powerful impact on the competitiveness of the economies of this region. The relatively low level of knowledge production is by no means a prevalent factor. For this reason in less competitive economies (such as those in Central Europe) expectations regarding the systems of higher education in the field of their role in rising economic competitiveness to a higher level should not be excessive since the burden formed by numerous extra-academic pillars of competitiveness is hard to overcome.Funding
Polish National Science Centre grant DEC-2011/02/A/HS6/00183
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