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25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries 1st ed. Edition Jeroen Huisman full chapter instant download
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PA L G R AV E S T U D I E S I N
GLOBAL
HIGHER
E D U C AT I O N
25 YEARS OF
T R A N S F O R M AT I O N S O F
H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N S Y S T E M S
I N P O S T- S O V I E T C O U N T R I E S
REFORM AND CONTINUITY
Series Editors
Roger King
School of Management
University of Bath
Bath, UK
Jenny Lee
Centre for the Study of Higher Education
University of Arizona
Tuscon, Arizona, USA
Simon Marginson
Institute of Education
University College London
London, UK
Rajani Naidoo
School of Management
University of Bath
Bath, UK
This series aims to explore the globalization of higher education and the
impact this has had on education systems around the world including East
Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the US. Analyzing HE systems
and policy this series will provide a comprehensive overview of how HE
within different nations and/or regions is responding to the new age of
universal mass higher education.
25 Years of
Transformations of
Higher Education
Systems in Post-Soviet
Countries
Reform and Continuity
Editors
Jeroen Huisman Anna Smolentseva
University of Ghent National Research University
Ghent, Belgium Higher School of Economics
Moscow, Russia
Isak Froumin
National Research University
Higher School of Economics
Moscow, Russia
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This book is an open access
publication
Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use,
sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you
give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative
Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the book’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in
this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher
nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material
contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains
neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
The Soviet Union fell apart a quarter of a century ago. Fifteen newly born
countries started their independent development in 1991 and a formerly
unified higher education system was divided up. The basic commonality of
Soviet design at the beginning of the independent era and the dramatic
transformations of the post-Soviet period serve as the point of departure
for this study.
Post-Soviet countries have different histories, and their socialist past is
not the only thing that builds their identities. Yet, it would be incorrect to
deny the significance of such a long and intense period in their national
histories. This experience is still on the table. Politicians, experts and aca-
demics still often discuss the present while referring to the past. However,
such references are not enough to grasp the effect of the Soviet past on
modern states and bring insights to understand the further development
of these societies. Both academic and pragmatic discourse lack a wide sys-
temic picture.
The studies of post-socialist countries are especially crucial as they
debunk the myths. Soviet society was not monolithic. Norms and practices
changed over time and varied among communities. Identification of the
real differences and similarities beyond the proclaimed statements is
important and requires a generous amount of ambitious studies.
Nevertheless, even very general assumptions about the Soviet past can
result in great contributions to the discussion, especially if the research is
comparative. Juxtaposition can reveal the core rationales for changes and
the foundations of the current state of affairs. The simultaneous start of
vii
viii PREFACE: CHALLENGES AND ADVANTAGES OF EXPLORING POST-SOVIET...
countries’ own trajectories makes the observed period the field of ‘natural
experiment’ which should be described.
In studies of post-Soviet higher education, researchers usually focus on
particular issues. Academic discourse consists of a number papers that
investigate several topics of higher education development (e.g. outcomes
of reforms, internationalization, academic profession); they often consider
several countries of the post-Soviet space. Yet, we rarely see articles which
elaborate on higher education systemic development in its entirety. In
order to investigate a given problem, researchers naturally have to limit
the comprehensiveness of view. We therefore saw a niche for a book that
would contribute to building the background for further studies.
Context matters. That is why the design of this book reflects the diver-
sity of national pathways in higher education. At the start, we were faced
with several alternatives to proceed with the book composition. On the
one hand, the narrative could have flowed around particular aggregated
categories, with the chapters covering as many countries as possible. The
topics could have been major sets of reforms, fluctuations in basic system
indicators, or problems to be resolved in the context of higher education
development. However, after several discussions, we selected a more
demanding approach which, on the bright side, promised a deep and pro-
found contribution. This book is a collection of country cases, each of
them shaped in accordance with a common framework, yet each country
chapter provides a comprehensive view. The introduction chapter aims to
reveal a cumulative understanding of the object of study and the topic of
the higher education landscape in general.
Writing in this manner demanded extensive expertise from the contribu-
tors as well as their being personally embedded in the contexts. The search
for authors was a tricky task. The complicated process of finding academi-
cally relevant people required enlisting the efforts of several layers in our
professional networks. Fortunately, the idea behind the study and the ambi-
tion to cover the whole set of post-Soviet countries appealed to a number
of people around the globe, to whom we are thankful for their help.
The states examined have gone through hard times. We did not pur-
posefully pick the moment for the start of the project, but by chance the
two years of the study turned out to be an extraordinary period for this
part of the world. Under these conditions, the outstanding academic
integrity and ethics of the authors and editors became a real asset for the
project.
PREFACE: CHALLENGES AND ADVANTAGES OF EXPLORING POST-SOVIET...
ix
The second major challenge in the fulfilment of this task was obviously
the lack of data. First of all, due to a number of reasons, data is not likely
to be available for the countries studied. Our retrospective view intended
to involve some dynamic pictures. We faced difficulties in collecting and
comparing even aggregate numbers. At the beginning we were lacking
such common characteristics as number of higher education institutions
and student body in private sector, funding and research performance in
higher education, and so on.
Moreover, investigation of the institutional landscape requires a capa-
bility to differentiate the types of HEIs and their roles in the system. The
wide variations between countries, especially in the size of their higher
education systems, make it impossible to rely on a universalistic approach
to data collection and analysis. Such an approach might have weakened
the results. Due to these reasons a mixed approach was selected. The
authors used both qualitative and quantitative methods. Analyses were
based on a number of expert interviews, fragments of data and literature
reviews. In every case, the choice of relevant techniques and methodology
resulted from numerous discussions between the respective authors, edi-
tors and the coordination team.
We hope that this study will make one more step in the gradual move-
ment towards opening up opportunities for research on the post-Soviet
space built on transparent data and keen academic interest. Based on results
of the project, we created a web timeline of higher education key policy
events in all post-Soviet countries. We expect that the scope of this tool will
expand, and it will aggregate more useful information for further work.
The demand for a thorough grasp of post-Soviet higher education
transformations in each former Soviet Republic seemed natural at the
start. Basically, we assumed that national higher education systems reflect
changes in societies and the economic and political environment. The
institutional landscape of higher education, the structure of the system
and the set of ‘rules of the game’ can tell us a great deal about the society
in which they are rooted.
xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
the book to the academic demand. The credit for this goes to the HERB
editorial team and coordinators, who came up with an idea and got the
issue perfectly fulfilled.
Our greatest acknowledgement is reserved for the 31 researchers for
the country case studies, who committed themselves to this project for
two years, who were so involved in discussions, who hunted down the pre-
cious data and who so patiently worked through the several versions.
Thanks to their energies, the project was enriched by the several work-
shops and panels around the world. During the Conference of the Russian
Association of Higher Education Researchers (RAHER) in 2014 and in
2015, we held project workshops in Moscow (Russia), where all the
research teams presented the results. We would like to thank Mark Johnson
for his great contribution to the discussion and fruitful comments.
With active participation of the research teams, we had project panels
and roundtables at the CIES Annual Conference in Washington D.C.
(USA) in 2015, where Stephen Heyneman (Vanderbilt University) pro-
vided very helpful feedback to the idea and preliminary findings. Also, some
reflections had been presented at the session at the European Conference
on Educational Research (ECER) in 2015 in Budapest (Hungary).
This book could only have happened thanks to the efforts of this large
and diverse team of ambitious researchers.
Postscript
When this book was ready for print we received tragic news. Dmitry
Semyonov, director of our research project, died in a car crash at the age
of 31. During his short life he created the strong academic unit at the
Institute of Education – Laboratory for Universities Development focused
on higher education studies. He was a very creative leader who proposed
exciting new topics for study. His studies and publications informed
Russian higher education policies.
He was a real leader of our project. He managed to mobilize 15 research
teams and the editors. He raised funds, organized seminars and work-
shops, was involved in data collection and initiated substantive discussions.
We will always remember the joy of working with him.
Note
1. https://herb.hse.ru/en/2016--2(8).html
Contents
xv
xvi Contents
Appendix 461
List of Figures
xix
xx List of Figures
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