Analysing the Transformation of Higher Education Governance in Bulgaria and Lithuania

Abstract

Drawing on sociological neo-institutional theory and models of higher education governance, we examine current developments in Bulgaria and Lithuania and explore to what extent those developments were shaped by the Bologna reform. We analyse to what extent the state has moved away from a model of state-centred policy design and control to a model of governance based on the ‘evaluative state’ Neave (1998), in which the state ensures ‘product control’ and promotes competition and quality. To do so, we look, in particular, at funding policy and the emergence of a system of quality assurance. To conclude, we examine whether the governance patterns of both countries have converged and identify the factors accounting for potential variations.

Key words:

• Higher education governance, Europeanization, Bologna Process, convergence, isomorphism, Lithuania, Bulgaria

Notes

1. We explicitly focus on long-established public universities.

2. For more details on governance within universities, see De Boer et al. (2007a); Dobbins (2011).

3. For a critique of the shorter degree structures, see Labi (2009); for arguments regarding the lacking legal legitimacy of the Bologna Process, see Garben (2010a), and for the purported commercialization of higher education see Garben (2010b).

4. For the differences between mimetic, normative, and coercive isomorphism, see DiMaggio and Powell (1991).

5. The classification integrates key insights and categorizations from previous HE studies, most notably Clark (1983); Neave and van Vught (1994, 1998); Braun and Merrien (1999); Olsen (2009); Jongbloed (2003); Paradeise et al. (2009) and De Boer et al. (2007a). For a third model – the academic self-rule model (Humboldt model) – see Dobbins and Knill (2009). This model was historically less prevalent in Bulgaria and Lithuania and traces of it were eradicated during the communist era. However, academics did seek to revive elements of it in the post-communist era, but the tradition of academic self-rule in Bulgaria and Lithuania remained much weaker than in Poland and the Czech Republic, for example.

6. Bulgarian: Националната агенция за оценяване и акредитация.

7. In fact, the state-steering authority was not vested in the ministry, rather within the Parliament (National Assembly/Народно събрание) and Council of Ministers, which was entrusted with the authority to open, transform, and close faculties and HI institutions (Article 9 – HE Act of 1995).

8. The top managers of the agency, appointed on the basis of their knowledge foreign languages and HE systems, believed programme accreditation should prevail, while the state insisted on institutional accreditation. As a result, operations only began in 1998 (Interview BG-6).

9. Закон за изменение и допънение на закона за висшето образование (Law to change and supplement the law on higher education).

10. The output component pertains to the allocation of competitively procured funds by the University Grants Commission, which have been restructured into so-called University Funding Councils (see Theisens, 2004).

11. The state-centred approach was reinforced by the fact that the amount of funding per university – although directly pegged to student numbers – was initially still subject to a parliamentary decision, and then itemized and controlled by the ministry. Hence, even after this change in the funding mode Bulgarian universities had little incentive to increase efficiency and performance.

12. This is purportedly based, above all, on British practice, which combines a mixture of self-study, student evaluations and subsequently external institutional and programme evaluation of teaching, research, and institutional capacity (Interviews BG-4; BG-1; BG-6).

13. The salaries of academics were low and did not increase despite increasing student number. As a result, academic teaching in up to four different HE institutions became commonplace in the 1990s.

14. At that time still separate from the Ministry of Education.

15. Centre for Quality Assessment in Higher Education: information available at: http://www.skvc.lt/en/?id=0.

16. For example, Vilnius University in 2000 earned 30 per cent of its income from private sources, while student fees constituted around 57 per cent of this income. Participation in the international projects and rent of premises accounted for 18 per cent, while research activities contributed 10 per cent to university the budget (Vilnius University, 2001: 1–3). The number of self-paying students constituted nearly 37 per cent of total student body at Vilnius University in 2000 (Leisyte, 2002).

17. The student numbers were negotiated between the universities and the Ministry of Education and Science, whereby the state would usually ‘order’ a certain number of students in specific disciplines and they would be funded by the state. Universities were free to determine the number of additional fee paying students.

18. Depending on the university profile the external income can make up to 75 per cent of university budgets in Lithuania today.

19. Moreover, the Science Council of Lithuania gained more powers by a special regulatory act in 2009, since now it is no longer only an advisory body, but a research funding body, which distributes funding (mainly EU structural funds) to HE institutions on a competitive peer-review basis. This shows that academic self-governance and power exercised through advisory bodies has not been diminished.

20. See Dobbins and Knill (2009) for case studies on two CEE countries – Poland and the Czech Republic – which have more strongly re-embraced Humboldtism and only sluggishly moved towards the market-oriented model. By contrast, the authors determine that Romania, which was previously an extreme case of state-centrist HE, has also converged on the market-oriented model. This lends further legitimacy to the hypothesis that CEE countries with a strong state-centrist tradition – contrary to CEE countries with a stronger tradition of academic self-rule – have moved more swiftly towards market-oriented steering.

21. For the difference between ‘sigma’ and ‘delta convergence’, see Heichel et al. (2005). ‘Sigma convergence’ describes a decrease in policy variation between two countries or systems, whereas delta convergence refers to the minimization of distance to an ideal-type model.