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Polish Higher Education and the Global Academic Competition: University Rankings in the Reform Debates

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Global University Rankings

Abstract

The use of statistics and indicators to evaluate public policies and higher education management in particular is not a new development per se. Cornmunist countries of Central and Eastern Europe relied heavily on these instruments and planning was used in all sectors (Rowell, 2006; Pirker et al., 1995). However, it would be difficult to compare the scientific management of higher education by the comrnunist states with the policies of their successors who seek to harmonize their higher education systems with their European counterparts in order to keep the pace of global academic cornpetition. In most countries of the Soviet Bloc, higher education institutions (HEIs) were treated as administrative units. The planning was based mainly on input-oriented material indicators (such as the numbers and social origin of students) rather than on output-oriented, non-material aspects. From a contemporary perspective of higher education management, not only do the indicators used differ, but their purpose has changed. Since the fall of the communist regimes, the idea of academic competition driven by market forces and international mobility of workers has been constructed as a new imperative. This chapter seeks to analyze how the Polish higher education community has reacted to this constraint, how it has tried to accommodate it and how the injunction of competition has been used by experts and policymakers.1

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Authors
  1. Dorota Dakowska
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Helsinki, Finland

    Tero Erkkilä

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© 2013 Dorota Dakowska

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Dakowska, D. (2013). Polish Higher Education and the Global Academic Competition: University Rankings in the Reform Debates. In: Erkkilä, T. (eds) Global University Rankings. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137296870_7

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