Critique & Humanism | 36 | 2011 | Quality of Higher Education in National and Global Contexts
The changes in the Higher Education Act after 1995: A dead-end maze
Tania Petrova
Sega daily, Sofia
The aim of this text is to analyze structural discrepancies and deficiencies in the Bulgarian Higher Education Act with respect to the quality of the teaching process and research. The text traces back crucial legislative amendments concerning the mechanisms for quality management, evaluation, accreditation and control. Major issues on the national and institutional level, such as long-term policy setting, expansion of higher education, financing and academic autonomy, are further analyzed in terms of different stimuli for raising the quality of education and research. The review of the normative changes mirrors numerous legislative compromises, delays of crucial regulations and implementation failures which all lead to inefficient models for monitoring and rewarding quality of teaching and research. In conclusion, the text outlines major problems that need to be addressed in future debates, such as total public spending on higher education, fair competition between state and private institutions, quality-based financing of education and research, broader management and academic autonomy, combined with institutional transparency and accountability.
The end of state control: From political to academic arbitrary rule?
Maya Grekova
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia
The emphasis of this paper is placed on the issue of responsibility and hence, it is not intended to be a detailed overview and analysis of the debates on and the amendments in the “new” law on the Development of the Academic Staff of 2010, which replaced the Academic Degrees and Titles Act. Of major interest for this paper are two issues that contain key aspects of the reform: What happens with the academic staff when political control is lifted? What happens with the academic staff when the system in charge of its development becomes decentralized? My thesis is that political control in itself does not relieve scholars from any responsibility for their actions related to the “development of the academic staff”; yet, the existence of political control allows for the degradation of responsibility as a value. The abolition of political control in itself does not restore the value of responsibility; in the lack of non-academic control, the unrestored value of responsibility could lead to “academic” arbitrary rule.
Accreditation versus ranking system: What is each to measure?
Anastas Gerjikov
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia
The paper examines the current situation of Bulgarian higher education and particularly the role of accreditation and the new university ranking system. It discusses the recently proposed new accreditation criteria and the adopted amendments to the Higher Education Act. The author accepts the funding principle of the last ten years, according to which the state subsidy of a university depends on the number of students enrolled, but argues that it must also depend on the quality of education. The paper defends the view that the quality of education should continue to be assessed by the National Evaluation and Accreditation Agency and this assessment should be used for the purposes of subsidy distribution, whereas the results of the ranking system should serve only as a tool guiding users’ choices.
The national agency for assessment and accreditation facing new challenges in higher education
Dimitar Yonchev
New Bulgarian University, Sofia
This paper clarifies the actual role of the National Evaluation and Accreditation Agency (NAAA), which is a statutory body for evaluation, accreditation and monitoring of quality in higher education institutions and scientific organizations in Bulgaria. The paper is an attempt to explain the Agency’s challenges and politics in the area of higher education which are meant to address the needs of various stakeholders including students, parents, industry and society at large.
Efficiency of state funded higher education institutions in Bulgaria: Application of data envelopment analysis
Anita Baikusheva
Open Society Institute, Sofia
Boyan Zahariev
Open Society Institute, Sofia
Dessislava Kuznetsova
Open Society Institute, Sofia
Dragomira Belcheva
Open Society Institute, Sofia
Petya Brainova
Open Society Institute, Sofia
The paper represents the authors’ pilot test of a method for cost benefit analysis of higher education. For Bulgaria, this is an innovative approach but it is widespread in scientific research in Europe. The authors explain the basics of the method and highlight its advantages for the evaluation of non-profit organizations and public administration vis-à-vis the traditional cost benefit analysis. The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is applied to 33 publicly funded universities in Bulgaria. An overall assessment of the public spending on universities is made together with an evaluation of the quality of their research. The pilot experiment includes also differential modes of financing different professional fields in higher education. The paper illustrates the broad possibilities for using this method of analysis in support of the decision making process and development of successful teaching and research in the Bulgarian universities.
Sharing the costs of education as a solution to the existing problems in the system for financing higher education in Bulgaria
Alexander Alexandrov
American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad
The author reviews the system for financing higher education and the fundamental reasons for governments to subsidize higher education as a public good. He recommends a change in the system with two major components: financing all accredited institutions of higher education without discrimination on the basis of ownership, and a gradual decrease of the state subsidy share of total expenses, with the rest being funded by students with the help of the recently introduced government-guaranteed loans. A claim is made that such a change will increase students’ motivation and will improve the quality of education through a healthy competition on the basis of a price/quality analysis. The author also claims that a system where “the funds follow the student” is superior to historical-value systems that do not take into account the success of the graduates and the quality of education in the respective professional field and institution. A gradual approach for achieving the results is presented.
Scientific expertise: Personal and institutional assessment
Borislav Toshev
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia
Research literacy is a set of rules and information, the ignorance or disregard of which would make impossible the realization of a successful scientific career. This article offers a description and analysis of various issues concerning research literacy. A description is given of the world system for abstracting, indexing and evaluation: its first level embraces primary research journals and the second level is built by secondary research sources where the same primary research journals are presented as well. The article describes both the Hirsch Index and the research efficiency factor by which the scientific excellence of an individual researcher could be assessed. A system for a quantitative evaluation of research competency of scientific organizations is proposed.
Questions that Minister Ignatov has to answer
Interview questionnaire of Dimitar Vatsov
Exclusivity, exclusion and the risks of the Bologna process
Todor Hristov
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia
Ivelina Ivanova
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia
The paper claims that European policies conceive the quality of higher education as a particular kind of intangible asset – excellence. In order to substantiate that claim, we offer an outline of the concept of intangible asset as developed in the economic theory around the turn of the 21st century as well as of the methods for assessing intangibles relevant to excellence. We intend to demonstrate that the rearticulation of higher education quality as excellence, initiated by the Bologna process, will bring about new forms of exclusion that will expose universities and research institutions in relatively smaller societies to the risks of decapitalization and provincialization.
The Bologna process in question: National versions and instrumentalization
Gilles Rouet
Institut Français de Bulgarie, Sofia
This contribution presents some negative reactions against the Bologna Process and an analysis of that process in terms of economic, political and “auto” instrumentalizations. The actors, the so-called “stakeholders,” have at best the illusion of being at the centre of the evolution of the higher education system. That deficiency concerns especially students: they are not really consulted and have almost no decision making power. One of the aims of the Bologna Process is to implant a “culture of evaluation,” but this implementation is essentially technical. Rather than making a move to a new democratic functioning, the outcomes of the process separate the actors and their own strategies. The new competition should be diluted in new collaborations as part of the ongoing development of social uses, in new networking structures and public spaces. Universities are precisely such new networks and it is high time for their political “re-establishment.”
Meanings and functions of the university between Humboldt and Bologna
Krassimir Stojanov
Bundeswehr University, Munich
In this paper, I develop the argument that Humboldt’s principle of the unity of teaching and research should be seen as a foundational norm of the contemporary university. Only teaching that is understood as inclusion of students in guided research practices could cultivate analytical and argumentative abilities, which are crucial for all academic professions. However, the way in which the Bologna reform has been implemented in the representative case of Germany works against the unity of teaching and research. That is why I conclude the paper with a plea for a reform of the Bologna reform.
Education, education, education – Three notions of quality in higher education in England and Wale
Lois Lee
University of Cambridge, Cambridge
Carolyn Heitmeyer
University of Sussex, Brighton
The goal of this paper is to review the recent history of higher education in England and Wales, focusing especially on the post-Tony Blair (and post-Bologna) years and on the related but distinct questions of the value and quality of academic research. We argue that Blair’s 1996 slogan, “Education, education, education,” unintentionally reflects the significant feature of this history. While intended to emphasize the importance of education in society, the phrase also symbolizes what we see as three distinct movements or threads in the late 20th century and early 21st century development of higher education in England and Wales: democratization (or popularization), marketization and, in a specific and revised notion of word, professionalization. Quality is the end-goal in all of these models, and meritocracy is universally conceived of as the means of achieving it. They differ, however, in their view not so much of what these things are but of how they might be implemented. We summarize these differences and argue that, despite them, democratization and marketization are mutually reinforcing in practice. We argue that this leaves a truly critical analysis of the purpose and ethos of higher education wanting – and suggest a third model, professionalization, as a real alternative to both. This discussion is related to the task of evaluating academia, both in terms of its value to society and the quality of its products.
Higher education reforms in England: From public funding to a market logic
John Holmwood
University of Nottingham, Nottingham
john.holmwood@nottingham.ac.uk
This paper sets out the recent changes to higher education in England, drawing out their radical and far-reaching nature. The first part of the paper describes the proposals in detail in order to identify their key aspects and to facilitate comparison with other higher education systems. The second part of the paper places them in the context of the growth of mass public higher education since the 1960s. It suggests that they mark a radical break with earlier policies and undermine a previously accepted social mission for universities in the amelioration of inequality. The market and its values of efficiency, investment in human capital, and economic growth are now supplanting the wider public benefits of higher education and its role in maintaining a democratic and critical public culture.
Quality of higher education and university reforms: The Italian case in a long-term perspective
Antonio Ferrara
University of Naples, Naples
This paper argues that tensions between mass access and quality of higher education (usually resolved in favor of the former) are at the roots of the problems currently faced by the Italian universities. Once de facto reserved to relatively small elite selected on the basis of social privilege, they were open to ever larger strata of the population since the 1960s when Italy started its brusque and uneven modernization process. The way the new “mass university” was created, however, ended up degrading the overall quality of Italian higher education since no measures were taken to safeguard standards of quality once guaranteed by the limited dimensions of the whole system. Only recently, some steps have been taken in the opposite direction, mainly with the latest reform of 2010 whose outcome however remains to be seen.
Pax Sinica and the Chinese education pact
Dimitar Kambourov
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia
The essay is a free attempt for a reflection on the Chinese university education. Since I spent two years as a lecturer of Bulgarian language, culture and literature in a prestigious Chinese university, here I share my personal impressions and somewhat negative experience of this either backward or very different educational system which is based on learning by heart and mechanical reproduction of already dated data. In this, I rely also on information provided by my MA student there who worked on the comparison between the Bulgarian and Chinese educational systems. For me, it was obvious that the Chinese youths feel unhappy with their system because of its examoriented high-school education and its frailty as an up-to-date university efficiency.
The power of the periphery in the age of disintegration of the old centrisms
Interview with Diana Mishkova by Elitza Stanoeva
Sofia, 28 July 2011
Defining research priorities in the European context
Interview with Luca Giuliani by Elitza Stanoeva
Berlin, 6 July 2011
Paths of education
Elitza Stanoeva
Technical University, Berlin
elitza.stanoeva@metropolitanstudies.de
Collage based on student essays from the journal competition
Student exchange as luxurious opportunity
Todor Hristov
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia
Semantic web of student essays from the journal competition
Against the wall
Tsvetelina Manova
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia
Competition winning student essay