The book (at a moment it is still in print) is the main result of this research project (i.e., DEP): 19 authors in 15 chapters (articles) cover various aspects of the challenges posed by globalization and internationalization processes to the European Higher Education. Contributions have been received from the authors at all six centres and institutes that participated in the preparation of the DEP project as well as from some other. Four members of our research group have contributed three articles: the first analyzes the discourses and ideas in the European Commission’s documents on Higher Education policy, the second analyzes the effects of Europeanisation on institutional diversification, and the third analyzes the contemporary higher education reform in the Western Balkans in the light of the policy transfer and the relationship between centres and peripheries.
This article discusses changes in the contemporary understanding of university autonomy and university governance in the European context. In the 1980s and 1990s, radical changes occurred in higher education governance mainly as a result of internationalization and Europeanization processes. Within these changes, a shift in interest from the concept of academic freedom to the concept of institutional (managerial) autonomy can also be identified. Against the reductionist discourse of managerial autonomy and myths of “absolute autonomy”, university autonomy is reconsidered as a “continuous negotiation” redefining academic positioning within the so-called emerging knowledge society. Academic freedom and institutional autonomy are thus treated in relation to public responsibility for as well as of higher education and academic research.
COBISS.SI-ID: 9354569
This paper is a contribution in a thematic monograph on “European higher education at the crossroads” and addresses a question which are the “EHEA principles” (if any). Analysis shows that the use of the term 'principle' in the contemporary higher education discourses is very vague. With further discursive and ideational analysis of the key documents of the Bologna Process a set of concepts has been extracted, which is conditionally to be considered “the EHEA principles” and which makes basis to create a conditional “EHEA philosophy” or better “philosophies”. They are not always and not necessarily congruent. In conclusion, we argue against fixing any “final list” of principles and against their “full implementation”; instead, our findings suggest the launching of a new critical discussion on the new challenges of higher education beyond 2010. In the same monograph articles of the other two members of the research group are published: K. Miklavič [COBISS.SI-ID 9240137], which addresses the relationship between academic values and commodification of higher education, and M. Klemenčič [COBISS.SI-ID 9240393], which deals with changing conceptions of student participation in the governance of higher education.
COBISS.SI-ID: 9239881
The article analyzes the last two decades of higher education reforms in Slovenia. During the “period of transition”, they were led by national as well as international initiatives. At an early stage, the national initiatives were mainly based on criticisms of the last reform made by the former regime although the generation of new ideas and proposals was closely associated with international trends and good practices. Later, “Europeanization” came to dominate policy development, but national “struggles in the field of higher education” (Bourdieu, 1988) led to a substantial reinterpretation of the Bologna agenda. The dichotomy of productive adaptation and implementation of common European policies at a national level and the “provincializing” of higher education seems to remain a central issue when addressing the current problems.
COBISS.SI-ID: 9117513
The paper reconsider the shift of the role of higher education in national developments focusing at the region of South-Eastern Europe (SEE) and a case of the social reconstruction of the Western Balkans during the last decade. Academic traditions in SEE have been extremely diverse; however, the transition period and social reconstruction put the region under strong international and global influences. On one hand, traditional diversities are disappearing but new diversities – linked to new national states – are appearing. Thus, the region represents a specific case for further research in higher education.
COBISS.SI-ID: 8492105