Artykuły naukowe (WNS)
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Browsing Artykuły naukowe (WNS) by Subject "academic attitudes"
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Item Constructing Universities as Organizations: University Reforms in Poland in the Light of Institutional Theory(2016) Kwiek, MarekThis chapter shows that apart from changes at the systemic and institutional levels, successful reform implementation struggles with a gradual change in academic beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. Currently, visions of the university proposed by the Polish academic community and visions of it proposed by Polish reformers and policymakers (within ongoing reforms) are worlds apart. I shall study recent reforms in the context of specific academic self--protective narratives being produced in the last two decades (at the collective level of the academic profession) and in the context of the Ivory Tower university ideals predominant at the individual level (as studied comparatively through a large--scale European survey of the academic profession). Institutions change both swiftly, radically – and slowly, gradually. Research literature on institutional change until recently was focused almost exclusively on the role of radical changes caused by external shocks, leading to radical institutional reconfigurations. And research literature about the gradual, incremental institutional change have been emergent for about a decade and a half now (Mahoney and Thelen 2010; Streeck and Thelen 2005, 2009; Thelen 2003). Polish higher education provides interesting empirical grounds to test institutional theories. Both types of transformations (radical and gradual) may lead to equally permanent changes in the functioning of institutions, equally deep transformations of their fundamental rules, norms and operating procedures. Questions about institutional change are questions about characteristics of institutions undergoing changes. Endogenous institutional change is as important as exogenous change (Mahoney and Thelen 2010: 3). Moments in which there emerge opportunities of performing deep institutional reforms are short (in Poland these moments occurred in 2009-2012), and between them there are long periods of institutional stasis and stability (Pierson 2004: 134-135). The premises of theories of institutional change can be applied systematically to a system of higher education which shows an unprecedented rate of change and which is exposed to broad, fundamental reform programmes. There are many ways to discuss the Kudrycka reforms - and "constructing Polish universities as organizations" (rather than traditional academic "institutions") is one of more promising. In this account, Polish universities are under construction as organizations, and under siege as institutions. They are being rationalized as organizations, following instrumental rather than institutional logics. Polish academics in their views and attitudes are still following an institutional logic, while Polish reforms are following the new (New Public Management-led) instrumental logics. Both are on a collision course about basic values. Reforms and reformees seem to be worlds apart. I am discussing the the two contrasting visions of the university and describing the Kudrycka reforms as the reistitutionalization of the research mission of Polish universities. The core of reforms is a new level of funding and governance - the intermediary one (and no longer the state one), with four new peer-run institutions, with the KEJN, PKA and NCN in the lead. Poland has been beginning to follow the "global rules of the academic game" since 2009. I am also discussing two academic self-protection modes agains reforms: (Polish) "national academic traditions" and "institutional exceptionalism" (of Polish HE). Both discourses prevailed for two decades, none seems socially (and politically) acceptable any more. Old myths do not seem to fit new realities. In this context I am discussing briefly and through large-scale empirical data the low connectedness to the outside world of Polish HE institutions, low influence of the government on HE policies and the low level of academic entrepreneurialism, as seen through the EUROAC/CAP micro-level data. The conclusion is that the Kudrycka reforms are an imporant first step only - Poland is too slow in reforms, and reforms are both underfunded and inconsistent. Poland is still accumulating disadvantages as public funding and university reforms have not reached a critical point. Ever more efforts lead to ever less results, as macro-level data show. Consequently, it may be useful to construct universities as organizations in Poland to a higher degree than elsewhere in Europe, and especially in Western Europe.Item Institutional Differentiation and Social Stratification in European Universities: The Academic Profession Between "Research Top Performers" and "Silent Scientists"(2014) Kwiek, MarekThe academic profession has always been highly stratified. Through an analysis of academics from 11 European countries (N = 17,211), the role of a distinctive group of highly productive academics (upper 10 percent) is studied. The Opening Speech shows that this group is responsible for about a half of all articles published across Europe, and the pattern is consistent across 11 countries, 5 major clusters of academic fields, and across time. Our research tends to call into question the assumption regarding the relative homogeneity of the European (university-based) academic profession. From the perspective of knowledge production, the dividing line today is not only between academics employed in university and non-university sectors: it is also, perhaps more fundamentally, between highly productive academics and the remaining academics in the university sector itself. Based on research productivity rates, there are strikingly different academic communities across Europe and across individual countries. The policy message of this Opening Speech is that European universities in their struggles for more funding and recognition are so heavily reliant on the European research ultra-elite that every national reform agenda should explicitly take their role into consideration (as it should the role of non-producers, or "silent scientists").Item "Strong Research Performers” vs. “Strong Teaching Performers” in European Higher Education: a Comparative Quantitative Perspective(2014) Kwiek, MarekTeaching and research are still the two fundamental dimensions of the academic enterprise, despite the increasing role of various, as they are termed in Europe, “third mission activities” (Kwiek 2013). Few academic studies of the academic profession have addressed the nexus of teaching and research from a consistently quantitative perspective. Most comparative studies available until recently were either focused on a small cluster of countries or based on qualitative material combined with publicly available statistical data. At a European level, studies were either of a general nature and based on often incompatible national methodologies, or referred to rela-tively simple, aggregated data produced by the OECD or the EUROSTAT, the European Commission’s statistical office. This paper explores the teaching/research nexus in European systems through large-scale comparative data on the research and teaching time allocation (academic behaviors) and teaching or research role orientation (aca-demic attitudes).Item Structural changes in the Polish higher education system (1990–2010): a synthetic view(2014) Kwiek, MarekThe paper locates the past two decades of changes in Polish universities in a comparative European context. It shows a wider transition: from an expanding, privatized and disciplinarily divided university of the 1990s to a publicly funded, increasingly contracting and stratified university of the 2000s (and beyond). The gradual political and economic integration of Poland with the European Union has been accompanied by the gradual integration of the Polish higher education system with Western European systems. The paper argues that the major emergent parameter of higher education policy is demographics and that the remonopolization of the system by the tax-based public sector and the gradual decline of the private sector are transforming the system beyond recognition. Processes of ‘de-privatization’ or ‘republicization’ are gradually replacing recent processes of ‘privatization’. Powerful systemic changes in university governance and funding modes are bound to shatter the relative stability of the academic profession. After two decades of being fundamentally different due to the communist legacy (i.e. being ‘post-communist’), selected Polish universities, owing to accelerating processes of academic stratification linked to the 2009–2012 wave of reforms, have a chance to become fully blown elements of a European knowledge production landscape, with increasingly similar governance and funding regimes and the similarly research-involved academic profession.