Keywords
Educational Reform
European Universities
University Autonomy
Higher Education Governance
Autopoiesis
Systems Theory
How to Cite
Abstract
European universities have come under reform pressures to make them instruments of social and economic development, compromising their earlier status as socially buffered institutions. The aim of this paper was to investigate the hypothesis that tensions and inconsistencies in recent higher education reforms in Poland trace back to a fundamental conflict between institutional and instrumental visions of the university. Findings suggest an intersection of „rationalized myths” that locks the university sector in a „corset” experienced by stakeholders more like a return to the Soviet past than the way of a better future. Seen through the lens of second-order systems theory, these findings problematize the assumption that the historically grounded institution of the university can be re-oriented as an instrument for achieving state priorities with a mere balance of carrots and state-of-the-art sticks.
Funding
Wydanie tego tomu nie byłoby możliwe bez wsparcia otrzymanego w ramach projektu MNISW Dialog (0022/DLG/2019/10), za co redaktor wyraża podziękowanie.
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