As I have began to argue above, a new understanding of the process and effects of change is generated when we consider different levels of analysis, and particularly when we focus on the local and individual practitioner level. Nevertheless, the national and regional context and how these fit into global developments is a necessary preliminary overview. There are a number of studies or commentaries on the reform of higher education in this region, as seen within the broader European or global trends (Jarab, 2008; Tomusk, 2007; Kwiek, 2007, 2004; Scott, 2002), or looking at specific national systems (for example, Johnson, 2010; Tomusk, 2003b; Kroos, 2007; Glonti and Chitashvili, 2007; Howlett, 2006; Slantcheva, 2007, 2003; Smolentseva, 2003; Kwiek, 2003; Marga 2003, 2002; Nicolescu, 2002; Fogel and Mauch, 1995; Darvas, 1995). These studies often provide a set of somewhat contrasting
evaluations of change centred on the processes of democratisation, modernisation and Europeanisation. What is clear from these analyses is the complexity of multiple transformations in higher education, which have resulted in new universities or even in new higher education systems, whilst partially preserving some of the university-state dynamics characteristic of the post-soviet and post socialist states.
It needs to be pointed out that we are speaking of a whole range of countries under the broad regional classification ‘Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union’, which, it has been argued, consist of educational systems that are not very similar and have been diversifying further. However, even the authors who do not like to generalise about its common characteristics, do continually write about these countries as a coherent post-socialist ‘region’ (e.g. Scott, 2002; Kwiek, 2006; Tomusk, 2000). One similarity among the contemporary Eastern European universities is that they share some basic continental European values summarised by Scott (2009: 283) as being ‘mass in scale and structure but elitist and hierarchical in fundamental values (certainly in contrast to the more open American higher education system)’.
Eastern Europe has certainly been firmly part of the continental tradition in education and represents the ‘chair model’ of a department, characterised by sharp distinction between professors and junior staff and long career progression from the latter to the former (as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon department-college model characterised by a flatter collegial structure (Enders, 2007: 13).
In historical terms, distinct stages of communist rule, of varied length in particular countries, point to an undeniable legacy of communism on the one hand, but also to somewhat different post-communist political cultures (Scott, 2009: 272). According to Scott (2009: 271), the perceived similarities in the post-communist higher education systems were caused by the unifying effect of the communist period, including forced collectivisation of agriculture leading to a kind of ‘levelling up’ of the more agricultural societies and a kind of ‘levelling down’ of the more industrialised ones. Additional similarities included partial or near-total destruction of previous intellectual elites together with the preferential treatment of working class and peasant students and the suppression of political differences by the various communist regimes. Tomusk argues that characteristics such as vocationalism, relative separation of research and teaching, highly centralised curriculum, and strong political control over institutions of higher learning (Tomusk 2000b: 52) have been over generalised by their critics after 1989 in a drive to demonise the communist past. However, David-Fox and Peteri (2000: 5) in their history of post-war soviet influence on the higher education systems, clearly identify early features of the communist academic regime at its inception and throughout the twentieth century, and its influence or ‘domestication’ across the countries of Eastern Europe. The developments included a state promoting science and at the same time suppressing autonomy in academia, the partial separation of research and teaching through the reorganisation of the academies of science and universities, a drive towards centralisation, the interpenetration of political and professional cultures and a preference for vocationalisation of university training, leading to, in the more extreme cases, the separating off of some faculties and their being placed under the influence of specific ministries or state companies (David- Fox and Peteri, 2000: 4-5).
The authors who study the history of socialist or post-soviet educational space see it as historically derived from a very distinct ‘Soviet academic regime’ (David-Fox and Peteri, 2000: 5) or the ‘Russian variant’ of higher education (Howlett 2011), which had developed even before communism and which during communism had exerted certain direct or indirect influence on the countries of the Warsaw Pact (Conelly, 2000), not to mention the former soviet republics (Howlett, 2006).
Even before we consider the varied degrees of soviet legacy in Eastern European higher education systems, we need to point out their more underlying common historical origin. Eastern European higher education systems initially derive from the ‘Humboltian’ or German model of university based on the principle of academic freedom of the professor to research and teach, which is based on a particular accommodation between academic oligarchy (professors) and the state (Howlett, 2011). This generally resulted in a strong ‘elite’ position of the professoriate, very pronounced hierarchy between different participants of the system (students, young researchers and full professors) and a very teacher-centred (and predominantly lecture-based) approach to teaching students. This was somewhat different from the more direct control of higher education system as a national apparatus for the production of state bureaucracy and the direct state control of the professoriate characteristic of the French or ‘Napoleonic model’ (Howlett, 2011) which exerted some influence on the Romanian higher education system. However, the end result of Russia’s adoption of the Germanic model in nineteenth century was an imperial system with an even stronger direct control of higher education by the state bureaucracy based on specific political priorities of
the state (such as, modernisation, urbanisation and repression of political dissent). It is this general model that subsequently became the basis for the soviet version of higher education which exerted influence on the republics and satellite states of the Soviet Union (Howlett, 2011).
Ruegg summarises the formation of the Russian universities in a slightly different way, as an amalgamation of the French and German traditions:
‘They rejected the French college model and adopted the German university model (…) But at the same time, the state assigned these universities, which were dedicated in principle to science, and enjoyed at least theoretical autonomy, the function of training its bureaucracy, as the French grandes ecoles did. This antagonism between the two models marked the alternating phases of liberalism on the one hand, and repression and militarisation on the other. (Ruegg 2004, 10)
These continental models were redefined early on during the communist period (in Russia in 20s and 30s and in the other counties in 40s and 50s) by an even greater tendency towards state control and an explicit social engineering purpose imposed upon higher education.
In the countries which became soviet republics and satellite states this has been exacerbated by the controlling and modernising aspirations of communist rule, often mimicking the Soviet Union model in terms of curricula, length of study, names of degrees and career progression, as argued by Connolly (2000), in the period after the Second World War and until Stalin’s death. Even though higher education has also been a considerable haven of resistance or relative autonomy in the ‘thaw’ periods in the respective countries (Scott, 2009: 272), the net effect of the communist rule was to establish a very specific type of higher education system,
even if particular features varied somewhat from country to country (David-Fox and Peteri, 2000).
In the broadest terms, higher education institutions were almost exclusively state owned, linked to the manpower needs of key industries and professions, politically controlled, funded directly by the state through a rigid line-budget, with limited (or no) autonomy or capacity of independent development (Scott, 2009: 276). During the communist period, for the countries directly under Soviet rule, there has been little precedent for complete university autonomy in teaching and little precedent for research - oriented teaching. That is because, as Howlett argues:
the soviet authorities displayed ‘anxieties over academic authority, expressed through the proliferation of subject areas; through the weakening of certain disciplines that might critically examine soviet society; to the state’s constant concern that academia needed to be watched and managed: could not be trusted to be self-regulating. These weaknesses continue into the post-1991 world, just as the Russian Variant continues to form the basis of higher education throughout the former Soviet Union and into Eastern Europe. (Howlett, 2011: 2)
The ensuing ethos of higher education included a highly prescriptive broad curriculum (prescribed either directly by the state or more indirectly through the perceived immutable tradition or canon of the discipline established by senior professors associated with the most prestigious universities), a long set of mandatory courses understood as ‘the fundamental knowledge’ often organised as a series of historical or thematic surveys of the discipline, a largely reproductive and prescriptive notion of student learning all the way through the first degree (and often into the first research degree). The resulting programs of study were almost
identical in each university, and there was little staff or student mobility, largely for economic and administrative reasons, but also due to the necessity of securing the necessary patronage of professors for admission or transfer. The mobility was therefore usually vertical only - the best undergraduate students became paid teaching assistants right after their first degree (usually constructed as 4-5 years leading to a small master’s thesis), and the most successful of them became junior lecturers, leading to the possibility of writing a first doctorate (candidate of science). The securing of university employment as a lecturer earned through the first doctorate, in turn led to the writing of second doctorate (facilitation or doktorskaya) and therefore securing a senior status at the department (often called ‘chair’ or ‘kafedra’).
Summing up, the systems under discussion are a mixture of the Humboltian ideal (where ‘knowledge’ or even ‘fundamental knowledge’ certainly takes the centre stage), with some features more akin to the Napoleonic tradition where the professional formation of civil servants, teachers, engineers is paramount (Scott, 2009: 272). In terms of the ideal institutional types discussed by Olsen 2007 (20), the East European universities became predominantly ‘instruments for shifting national political agendas’ of the state in the twentieth century, whilst retaining some ideological orientation towards the model of ‘university as a rule-governed Community of Scholars’.