A draft
Despite the allusion to the HOMO ACADEMICUS (gallicus) this chapter is not a writing in sociology of education. The approach of Pierre Bourdieu might be followed but not by a single person1. It might be followed by a whole institution as for example the Department of Sociology in our Faculty or the Institute for Sociology in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. It is a theme for a great institutional project and needs at least several persons working on this for several years. Moreover, with regard to my country such sociological approach will meet additional, almost insurmountable difficulties. Something similar as a research (study in the age, gender, parents’ etc. profile of the personnel of the higher educational and research institutions) had been carried by the former Institute for the investigation of the youth, belonging to the former Central Committee of DCMS (Dimitrov’s communist youth union – the Bulgarian ‘komsomol’). This research had taken several years but the archive of the Institute is destroyed and only several very general publications on this massive research had remained.
What about the additional difficulties? The principal one is that approximately 4/5 of the academic staff in our country had been recruited before 1989 and some of them are not fair when they are asked about their former belonging to the Party or even about the titles of their dissertations. In the library everyone could see that Professor X has written “Critique of the reactionary bourgeois interpretations on the doctrine Y”. But the same dissertation nowadays is presented by its author as “Contemporary Western interpretations on the doctrine Y”…
So, my Homo academicus bulgaricus is my personal sketch and a philosopher’s essay, because the empirical sociological work on this topic requires many other persons and several years. Also, in Bulgaria the type and the method of research have to be different, because here we don’t have such elitist high schools, as the French ones, but we have elitist secondary schools and the differentiation of the graduates and their future carrier routine becomes even earlier than in France. However, there is at least one basic similarity between the environment of homo academicus bulgaricus and homo academicus gallicus. These two species of the common genus live and work in a hyper-centralized and hyper-йtatist system.
Still, several notes might be made. As I claimed earlier, the academic community should be the guiding community in the societal transformations, but unfortunately for the time being in my country it is not. Maybe all over the world it is presumed that the academic community and the ‘academicians’, the universities people form the most ‘progressive’, avantgarde and important group in society for all social changes whatsoever. Isn’t it a prejudice? It is assumed that the average university person (irrespectively a student, a professor or administrator one is) is much more cultivated, educated and so on than the average citizen of the country. But if in a given country the academic community has not become an important factor in the processes of transformation, how should it be explained? If the situation is even worse and the ‘academics’ are the most conservative and retrograde group among all other guilds, how should it be interpreted?
For almost half a century the so-called ‘academic community’ in my country (in fact it has been called “the socialist intelligentsia”) was not a real academic community but the avantgarde of the ideological defenders of the governing political regime. Especially in some scientific and in the humanitarian spheres it was impossible to become an ‘academician’, to receive a full-time employment without having become in advance a member of the communist Party. We may speak of the principle of the “negative academic selection”. Academics could become mainly people doubtlessly loyal to the political regime and its societal “project”: “the building of the future classless society”, where rivers of honey and milk will spring incessantly, and justice, liberty and equality will govern the communication and friendly co-existence between the people, etc., etc. The then academics not in all but in many university disciplines were selected by criteria, positive in respect of the formation of the so-called ‘socialist and Party nomenklatura’. What mattered was not the erudition, education, creative thinking, mastering of foreign languages (God save especially from this!), and the ability to propose new ideas, i.e. the eternal values, encouraged and respected in the persons who have devoted their lives for the academic sphere all over the world and throughout human history. What mattered was to be faithful and loyal to the ideas of the bright future; to have become Party’s member in the very first opportunity one had been given; to have parents from the working class or the so called ‘working peasantry’. And the opposite: forget about working at the University if it had been proved that your parents or grandparents have opposed the building of the bright future (in the 50-s and the 60-s such unlucky people even had not been allowed to receive higher education; not to speak about doctor’s degree or academic carrier). Even some facts are telling: till the very end of 1989 in order to be allowed to become a candidate for a competition for a doctoral study (aspirantura) or full-time assistantship one had to supply three letters of recommendation, written not by eminent scholars in the given scholarly field, but by three Party’s members… Needless to say, these principles of selection were positive with respect to the former societal project, but opposite to the century-long traditional demands for becoming an academician and negative for the formation of the academic staff in our country.
Here the reference to one of the elucidating papers by Voldemar Tomusk is inevitable. In his “Reproduction of the ‘State Nobility’ in Eastern Europe: Past Patterns and New Practices” (published initially in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 21 (2000), No2, a revised version of it is included in his forthcoming “The Open World and Closed Societies. Essays on Higher Education Policies ‘in Transition’”). Tomusk proposes several explanations, which are more instrumental and applicable to our Bulgarian situation, than Bourdieu’s. First of all, I sign with my two hands beneath his overall thesis that the communist epoch was an era, which was characterized by a systematic destruction of the cultural and human capital. However, regarding Bulgaria this harsh judgement has to be historically limited till the end of the 1960s. In details for Bulgaria this process has been described by Vesela Chichovska in her book “Политиката срещу просветната традиция” - “Politics against the Educational Tradition”, (S., UPress, 1995, 457 pp.) and by the famous British historian Richard Crampton in his “A Short History of Modern Bulgaria” ( Cambridge UPress, 1987, translated in Bulgarian by Alexander Shourbanov and published by the Open Society Foundation in Sofia). What Tomusk generalizes, can receive many affirmative examples, documents, facts and data from these two historical surveys, especially from the one of our Bulgarian colleague. In this indispensable book is gathered enormous material. In it Vesela Chichovska passionately and convincingly narrates the awful story of the atrocities against the Bulgarian intellectuals in the ‘40-ies and the smashing of the previous educational establishments, the achievements and the traditions in the secondary and the higher education in our country.
*The physical extermination of the former ‘bourgeois and fascist йlite’ in the period 1944-1956, which had had several waves, the most horrifying of which was the first one. Then without charge and trial the revolutionary terror swept people, whose exact number will remain forever uncertain. According to Richard Crampton the number of the victims of the first waves approaches 100 000 and this number, compared with the total number of the then population posits Bulgaria on the tragic first place of the scope of the repressive measures among the former state-socialist countries. That’s why later on there were not considerable dissident movements and revolts. According to Crampton we didn’t have our 1956 as the Hungarians, neither our 1968 Prague spring, nor our 1980 and “Solidarity”, not because the Bulgarians are cowards, but because of the immediate execution of the ‘different’ human beings: firstly, after the entrance of the Red ‘Army-liberator’ and the establishment of the ‘People’s Power’; secondly, after the acceptance of the new ‘democratic and republican constitution in 1947’. Everybody, who was perceived as an enemy was either executed in the late 1940s and the early 1950s, or forced to spend several years in the “working camp”, where other thousands of people were beaten to death by their guards.
*To kill the enemy is one of the awful peculiarities, accompanying all the events in the deplorable history of the sinful mankind. What is much more incomprehensible, is the fact, that after the ‘socialist revolution’ and the establishment of the ‘Power of the People’ not only the enemies of the ‘hostile class’ were executed, but also some of the most prominent leaders of the communist Party. In Bulgaria such was the case with Traycho Kostov, who was one of the most influential and even internationally recognized Party officials. All his previous ‘comrades’ from the Central Committee of the BCP, who accused him and sentenced him to death for being a ‘Western spy’, of course didn’t possess any university degree as he did and couldn’t speak even literary Bulgarian, whereas he was fluent in several Western languages. No wonder then, that almost at once after his death one of the champions of the hysteric campaign of his public condemnation – Demir Yanev, became in 1949 a Minister of the People’s Education. Well, nobody cared that this person had graduated only from a secondary school with the poorest marks possible. What mattered was that he had helped to unmask ‘the enemy with the Party’s ticket’! One of the natural corollaries of all this symbolic extermination of the educated Party members, initiated with the murder of Traycho Kostov, was that absolutely no one of the Bulgarian Communist Party General Secretaries (who were of course also heads of the state-socialist Bulgaria) after that possessed any academic degree, except for the ones, received in the so called ‘High Leninist Party School’ in Moscow.
*The purges in 1944, 1946, 1948, 1953 and 1954 in all Bulgarian schools and universities actually lead to the dismissal of practically all the people, who had had the chance to study abroad, to master foreign languages and to be acquainted with the Western culture. Some people became jobless, because many scholarly and scientific disciplines were annihilated for being ideologically useless (as for example the teachers in classical languages in the secondary schools).
*The variety of cultural and scholarly tendencies, that have emerged in the inter-war period, the variety of different types of secondary schools, established by all kinds of foreign missions and organizations; the variety of the curricula in the similar university disciplines; the peculiar Bulgarian university tradition of the so called parallel lectures (consisting in the following: two Professors lecture on the same subject and the students chose whom to attend); all these were eradicated and most of the university people, who were lucky enough to loose only their occupation and to remain alive, were prohibited from publishing and continued to write only ‘for the drawer’.
*The descendants of the ‘bourgeois and fascist class’ were not allowed at all to continue their education in high schools. And respectively, the children and the grand children of the so-called ‘Active fighters against fascism and capitalism (ABPFK)’, were allowed the privilege to become students easier. All the rest ‘ordinary’ applicants had to pass difficult entrance exams, to compete and to receive high marks, because then as now, there was state determined numerous clausus, and for some disciplines only excellent marks (5.50 - 6.00) were sufficient for entering into the list of the accepted. Till 1989, even after the perestroyka, the children and the grand children of the ABPFK, were enrolled if they have passed the exams with 3.00.
*The formation of the new Party’s socialist йlite by ‘the affirmative action’, as Tomusk calls it, or as I labeled it ‘the chief principle of the personal selection’. It was positive in respect of the former societal project, but negative with respect to the century long academic traditions, described above; it comprised many kinds of contrivances: the so-called rab-facs, ‘faculties for former workers (and of course Party’s members)’; obligatory inclusion of all students in Komsomol; obligatory participation in the so-called working brigades one month in the summer and one in the autumn; immediate expulsion from the university if to some student happened to be excluded from Komsomol; immediate dismissal of the working occupation if to some member of the academic staff happened to be disciplinary punished as a Party member; obligatory precedence of the acceptance in the BCP before the start of the habilitation procedure for almost all humanitarian and social sciences; obligatory belonging to the Party in order to be ‘elected’ as an university official ( chair of department, dean or rector), etc.
However, in the 1970s and more dramatically in the 1980s, the circumstances and the social conditions began to alter. Gradually appeared many symptoms of impoverishment in the planned economy. (That’s why the two-month students’ brigades were obligatory). More and more the inefficacy of state-socialist methods of management and control of everything became evident. Even the uselessness of repression was felt by those ‘in charge’ of running the state. In the spheres of education and culture, in the translation and publication policies, in some theatre-performances and movies, and through the music that the youngsters adored, appeared hollows in the totalitarian ideology. Socialism was very far from the normal political, economic and educational practices, but at least it had shed its most grotesque features.
Here a new period begins. Let’s call it ‘the period of the cultural and the educational semi-normalization”. Then many of the elitist secondary schools gained enormous symbolic value. In many important urban centers were founded special humanitarian gymnasia and even at least one of the once several classical lycea was re-established in Sofia in 1977 as the National Classical Lyceum. In this period a new generation of socialist intelligentsia began to emerge. True, this process might be driven by the technocratic ambitions of the younger generation of Party’s officials. Undeniably, there was censorship and enormous preference for the sciences and vocational higher schools (especially the ones, connected with the instruction of the so-called ‘engineers-and-technical-intelligentsia’) on the university level. In this period the so-called ‘generation of Ludmila Zhivkova attained considerable cultural, scholarly and scientific influence. To explain: Ludmila Zhivkova was the daughter of Todor Zhivkov, the General Secretary of the BCP from 1956 till the 10th of November 1989. Here the methods of Pierre Bourdieu might help a lot. The accumulation of political power by the illiterate former generation of first and second echelon Party’s nomenklatura turned into cultural and educational capital for their children. But not only for them. There were thousands of other children of ordinary people, who were talented, gifted and competitive, who received their education in this elitist gimnasia and in the semi-normalized universities. The complexity of all the political, economic, cultural and social developments in this ‘developed socialist society’ is analyzed at length from a leftist point of view by many popular left-wing intellectuals and public figures in the thick volume “Защо рухна реалният социализъм-Why Did the Real Socialism Collapse” (ed. By Alexander Lilov, Center for strategic research, PH Christo Botev, S., 2001, 608 pp.) or “Българските преходи 1944-1999 - The BulgarianTransitions 1944-1999” by Eugenia Kalinova and Iskra Baeva (S., Tilia, 2000), and from a rightist position in the above-mentioned book by Eugene Daynov “Политическият дебат и преходът в България - The Political Debate and the Transition in Bulgaria” (Book two, chapter 7: “The Exit from communism”, p. 287-348).
Without some orientation in the complexity of processes that evolved here in this period of the last two decades in the state socialism it is impossible to understand properly the peculiarities of the first dozen years of the transition in Bulgaria. But the essence and scope of the educational processes and precisely the formation of the academic йlite in this sub-period of the history of state-socialist Bulgaria might be revealed only by a massive sociological survey.
What is the situation now? What could be said of the present day homo academicus bulgaricus? To some extent some general characteristic is made by Patricia Gueorgieva in her brand new book “The Higher Education in the Process of Social Transformation in Bulgaria”, S., National Institute for Education, 201, 167pp. (Патриция Георгиева, “Висшето образование в процеса на обществена промяна в България”, С., 2001, Национален институт по образование, 167 с.). In chapter V: Teaching staff and academic activity, p. 112-126 she proposes abundant information and data, received from the National Statistic Institute about the age and the gender-profile of the teaching and research staff; the ratio between the number of the students and the academics; about the proportions between the different age groups in the academic staff. To mention but few of her constatations:
*The university teaching staff under the age of 30 years is 8, 6% of the
total number; indeed all of them are assistant professors;
*The majority of the teaching staff is over 50 years old;
*37,5% of the professors are over 65 years old;
*In the majority of the high schools the teaching persons, who are over 55 years, are 75% and more of all the academics;
*The women-professors are only 4.0% of all the professors in the high schools; if to this number are added the women in the research institutes, the percentage rises to 9.3%;
*The number of the women, who are associate professors amounts to 21.3% of all the associate professors; plus the women – associate professors in the research institutes, the percentage rises to 27.2%;
From these data and many other additional numbers, supplied in columns, according to the age-criterion and the gender-criterion, she concludes that there is an indisputable tendency of gerontization and masculinization of the academic staff, and of a very, very slow building of an academic career.
There is also another similar, curious and suitable survey, made by Dobrin Todorov. It is made on the basis of the biographical data, included in the reference-edition “The Bulgarian Philosophical Culture in the XIX and XX century. Biographical and Bibliographical data”, ( S., 2000, LIK, 306 pp.) ed. by Atanas Stamatov, Dobrin Todorov and Nina Dimitrova. This volume ends with a very interesting summary-conclusion, written by Dobrin Todorov, entitled “Founders and bearers of the Bulgarian philosophical culture”, in which he distinguishes 7 generations of Bulgarian philosophers. The classifications and the observations he makes are based on the age-criterion, the gender-criterion, the criterion of origin; the criterion ‘publications’, the age of receiving the Ph.D. degree, the age of habilitation etc. His final sketch of the profile of homo academicus bulgaricus philosophicus, or the profile of the average academic person in the guild of philosophers in the present generation is:
“He is a man. He is born in a village or in a small town. He has graduated from the speciality Philosophy in the Philosophical faculty of the Sofia University. He has specialized in Western Europe or in the Soviet Union. He works (with part-time or full-time employment) in VUZ. He has the degree Ph.D., which he had acquired in the age between his 31-40 years. If he (at all) obtains the second degree ‘Doctor of the philosophical sciences’ he is already at least 50 years old. He has become an associate professor between his 41 and 50 years. (If he at all becomes full time professor, this happens when he is at least 45 years old). His theoretical interests are in the realms of the social philosophy or the history of philosophy. He has published between 3 and 5 books (including brochures, manuals for the secondary schools and monographs). (op. cit., p. 305, all the italics are made by the author).
Several notes as preliminary conclusion:
The profile of the contemporary homo academicus bulgaricus witnesses that there are certain indisputable tendencies and that there were certain indisputable trends. Nowadays all the experts here detect that in comparison with the developed Western countries the average age of the persons, earning their living in the academy is very high and the average participation of women in the academic activities is very low. However, none of these might be considered as a problem in itself. The majority of the academic notabiles here are convinced that, these are not problems at all. Firstly, they say, because the aging and the gerontization of the population is one of the demographic tendencies in the developed countries. Secondly, according to them the preliminary exclusion and the prejudices towards women capacities for academic and scholarly work have century long university tradition.
From another point of view, these problems are the main ones in our higher education. Because:
*The academic and the intellectual human resources of Bulgaria were drastically reduced in the ‘40s, the ‘50s and the ‘60s of the XX century through a whole range of oppressive measures of revolutionary terror – beginning with the murders, the purges and the imprisonment of approximately 100 000 teachers, editors, publishers, university stuff, priests, reserved officers, ( of course, not to mention the representatives of the ‘hostile capitalist class’ as merchants, industrials, bankers, politicians, diplomats, and the obvious collaborators of the ‘fascists’); their immediate descendants (children and grand-children) were not allowed till the end of the ‘70s to study at high schools at all and this was changed only in the last years of the perestroyka. Thus the ‘reactionary bourgeois class’ was decapitated. The bearers of urban culture and of economic, political, cultural and educational capital were either physically destroyed, or prevented from participation in the public, educational and academic life till the end of their lives.
*In contrast to the elitist French character and the peculiarities of the homo academicus gallicus, in Bulgaria very strong egalitarian tendencies were introduced into the sphere of the ‘reproduction of the academic staff’. Not in all, but in many specialties ( e. g. philosophy, sociology, international relations, political economy, journalism and law) till the end of the ‘70s even the participation in the entrance competitive exams (not to mention the enrolment) was dependant on the so-called ‘affirmative permission’, given by the Local Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, which identified that your parents and grand-parents had not belonged to the bourgeois and fascist class. The ideological egalitarianism and the anti-academic criteria of selection of the students had been multiplied and enhanced on the next level: the admission to competitive exams for becoming Ph.D. candidate and/or assistant-professor. Another enhancement and multiplication of these had been made on the next level: the habilitation procedure, which never began (especially in the above mentioned specialties) if the candidate for associate professor had not become in advance a member of the BCP.
*The formation of a new socialist intelligentsia in the ‘70s and in the ‘80, due to the high quality of some elitist secondary schools and the cultural and educational semi-normalization, led to the appearance of a really new ‘ripe socialism’ generation, whose origins were rooted in all strata of the then two-class society (workers and peasants). However, according to the National Statistical Institute in the past dozen of years
MORE THAN 700 000 OF BULAGARIANS HAVE EMMIGRATED OFFICIALLY!
The actual number not only of the people, who have obtained foreign citizenship, but also including the number of the constantly living abroad and not intending to return, approaches 1 000 000 people.
This is not only 1/8 of the population. What matters is not the quantitative proportion, but the qualitative profile. The ones who are gone, are younger, more educated, linguistically much more competent, more competitive, self-confident, entrepreneurial, active and independent than the ones, who remained. True, some people add that they are the most selfish ones, because in contrast to the stoics that had made the more difficult choice to stay here, they didn’t have this courage. What matters is not the psychological, but the behavioural profile of them. Indeed, they are not apt to collectivism and solidarity, but no one is to be blamed, having in mind the economic difficulties of the transition period and the undetermined future, in which (hypothetically) here will emerge something like middle class.
*The number of the students in the past dozen of years has more than doubled, whereas the number of the teaching academic staff remained unchanged. This is due to the desperate system of habilitation. One might become an associate professor, only after the retirement of the previous professor. One’s career development depends not on one’s personal qualities, achievements and talents, but on the external and accident factor whether on a national level someone will retire in the next decade or two. There is no private-associate professor (or professor) system here or guest-professor system.
*According to the data in the World Bank paper Constructing Knowledge Societies, 2002; (still unpublished draft) Bulgaria has one of the lowest number of students, engaged in doctoral studies, per capita of population all over the world: 3,8 out of 10 000. To compare: for Slovenia this number is 13,4 (according to the Master-plan of the Slovenian Ministry of education).
The chief causes for all these: 1) The numerus clausus system for the enrolment of all students, including the students for doctoral studies and the numerus clausus system for the habilitations. As it was in the totalitarian past.
2) Another decisive reason for the desperate situation of the depopulation of young and educated persons is the essence of the procedures for obtaining the Ph.D. degree and habilitation. As in the totalitarian past their final step and climax, is the public defense in the so-called ‘Specialized scientific councils’. They consist of 20-25 persons, elected by the Minister of education, who are specialists in a very broad sphere. Usually, only one or two of them are experts on the exact topic of the Ph.D.-paper or the publications for the habilitation. Only one or two of them have read some of the paper(s). The majority of the SSC votes anonymously whether or not the candidate to become Ph.D., or associated professor, or professor, without having read a single line of the paper(s). What matters is the opinion of the supervisor and the two peer-reviews. This is utterly demotivating and demobilizing even for the younger ones, who have made the stoic choice to remain here. The psychologists, who are acquainted enough with the profile of the average academic person confirm that he or she is usually an introvert one, who prefers one’s internal interests to external goods. The paternalistic system of promotion now entirely prevents the devotion of young persons to the academic activity, because it kills simultaneously the probability of recognition for your own efforts and works, done for decade(s). In the socialist epoch this was not such an impediment, because as a result, all these humiliations finally lead to becoming not only an academic, but part of the state-socialist nomenclatura with all the subsequent privileges, allowed to this strata.
Now, in the changed societal environment, what is what one gets? For enormous efforts one eventually receives some degree or promotion, but no one is really familiar with the nature of the scientific or scholarly work, done passionately for years. Moreover, in the radically changed economic environment becoming an academic means becoming a member of the poorest parts of the population and not of the low middle class, as it is in the more developed countries.
It is easier to predict what will be the consequences of the combination of all these factors both for the development of the academic community and the development of society.
Conclusion and policy proposals:
The problems in the Bulgarian higher education are omnipresent. According to the initial etymological meaning of the Greek word to problema, a ‘problem’ means ‘impediment’, ‘obstacle’, something which barriers the road and prevents from going further. With so many problems the Bulgarian higher education is destined to remain in the status quo ante, instead of going ahead. The devastating consequences of these not only for the academic community, but also for the society as a whole are beyond any suspicion.
What is to be done?
By all means the work for an elaboration of an entirely different legislative regulation should continue. The present Higher Education Act (or the Law for the Higher Education) and the Law for the scientific degrees and titles are desperate patchworks of corrections, additions, substitutions, amendments, deletions, corrections of the corrections made in 1999 and the like. Especially deplorable is the situation with the Law for the scientific degrees and titles. It had been passed in 1972. Today it is the 27th of July 2002. If someone opens it and reads it carefully, one will find such remarkable legislative demands as art. 5, according to which the doctoral theses have to be bound with the socialist development of the country (sic!, sic!) or art. 16 which requires that the habilitation research, all the research and the investigations have to correspond to the socialist development of the country (sic!, sic!). This proves that the patchwork won’t solve any of the problems of our higher education. This proves that no one reads this specific law and everything is done according to the habit and the (socialist) tradition. This also proves that shamefully the Bulgarian academic guild is maybe the last group in the society, which still does not have an idea of a law as such. It should be the first one, but alas.
The elaboration of a new legislative frame may be done either by the preparation of a new all-embracing act, or with two separate laws, as it is now – one general, and one for the academic degrees and titles. This is the indispensable measure for the beginning of the solving of the problems.
The chief players in this hopeful future process are clear:
*The Rectors’ Council should be (in theory) the main character. For the time being, however, the Council expresses tiny, conservative, palliative proposals on behalf of the academic community. It is very positive, that the rectors, who represent all the higher schools in Bulgaria with the exception of the Sofia University, by and by become a collegiate community. They more and more insist on the implementation of their conceptions in the academic practice and more and more firmly oppose the incompetent political orders, issued some times by the Parliament and/or the government.
*The Parliamentary Commission for education and science, where now are gathered very good experts, representatives of all the political parties in the National Assembly. There was also one caricature, the chair of the Commission, who was in charge from July 2001 till March 2002, but fortunately she has been replaced. The bad thing is that all these experts are in awful interpersonal relations, which is due mainly to the political fever, which very often prevents the work in the commission from the cool, expert debate.
*The Ministry of education and science, where the persons in charge now are much more of experts (and are much younger) than all the previous equips, appointed mainly on political grounds. Here and now the Ministry of education might play the most decisive role by resuming the work of the group, which prepares the draft proposal for a new Higher Education Act.
*The Academic Council of the Sofia University, which has enormous symbolic power in the media and tremendous influence in the eyes of the public opinion. The other aspect of the problems is the fact, that the Academic Council prefers to play as an individual actor, demanding for hegemony and monopoly on the grounds of its long history, and refusing all possible competition and cooperation with the rest Bulgarian universities. All the deeds of the Academic Council unfortunately prove, that for the majority of its members the motto is: “I do believe: when I close my eyes, no one can see me”.
*However, there is one chief actor, that is missing. The bearers of the renewal not only in the academe, but also for the society as a whole. The hundreds of thousands that have emigrated. At least the half of them are bearers of new mentality and world view. The people that might change the academic community are gone. The ones from the younger generation that have remained in the academic sphere, either begin to conform to the behaviour of the older generation, or gradually are getting marginalized. Even if the efforts of some academic officials to punish disciplinary or to dismiss some university rebellion do not succeed in the Faculty Councils, the person who has dared to criticize and propose something different becomes so isolated, which turns into actual ex-communication, although the job is kept.
*The Students’ Councils unfortunately are too much preoccupied with their political activities. The single voices that express criticism and innovative ideas by and by become suffocated or marginalized. It is easy to guess that the students and the younger academics very easily might be kicked-off the scene, because of the labels, attributed to them by the academic authorities: arrogant, ambitious, crude, ungrateful to the older etc. In a paternalistic country like ours this stigmatization invalidates the acts of the innovators in the eyes of their colleagues and the broader public.
Here is the main problem. The problem of the problems. There are two expressions, which sound to me crude and bureaucratic, but now it seems proper to use them. The problem of the problems is the academic human capital or the academic human resources. According to the data, given in the interim research paper, homo academicus bulgaricus is old and poor. 75% of the teaching staff in some universities are persons, who are 55-65 years old. The people, who teach and make the decisions in all the governing academic bodies are old, and maybe the majority of their decisions is predetermined by the fear that what is a head of them after they retire is not going to be otium cum dignitate, but humiliating misery.
On the other side, as stated at length, the younger academics are entirely demotivated to remain in the academe as it is now, with all its obsolete regulations and absurdities. Very often the Academic Council of the SU and the Rectors’ Council have explained the depopulation, the external and the internal migration of the academics-compatriots to other countries or to other occupations inside the country, bringing to the fore only the desperate pauperization of our social stratum. Even if it is true, it is only the half of the truth. The academic authorities are trying to exculpate themselves with the economic difficulties, but in the same time they have done their best in order to prevent the new legislative settlement for the obtaining of the Doctor’s degree and for the habilitation procedures.
The worst of all is that for the time being the problem has been misconceived and misidentified. Many times in the National Assembly has been revised this article of the Higher Education Act, which determines at what age the academics have to retire. Incredible quarrels accompanied the shift of the pendulum of the decisions, which several times changed the age limit: 65 – 68 – again 65. In the beginning of the 90s we had even a ‘lustrative’ law. It was forbidden, according to it, the persons, who have been chairs, deans and rectors in the socialist times, to occupy such positions for a certain period. It was in some cases ridiculous, because the application of the law lead to some absurdities, quite opposite to the intentions. In some cases it affected great scholars, who have not been members of the BCP, but only have occupied the academic positions because of their scholarly authority and recognition. In the same time the ‘lustrative’ law empowered some mediocre academics, who have been activists of the BCP, to become deans and rectors, because they have not been such in the socialist times!
Now the fruitlessness of all these measures is more than evident. The problem is not how to expel the old ones, but how to create possibilities and chances for the development of the younger generation.
This might be done only if the work on a draft proposal for a new Academic titles and degrees Act starts immediately. Later on this might be incorporated in the (now hypothetical) new Higher Education Act, the work on which will be much longer.
Also, here is the crucial point for the social responsibility of the private universities. Voldemar Tomusk is more than convincing, when he claims that in the countries ‘in transition’ the private universities not only could but should play a more decisive societal mission than the state ones, which are impeded by their traditional heritage and the economic shortages. The private universities might try to form new academic collegia and their own teaching staff, in stead of employing the academic authorities of the old universities. By doing so, they will not only preserve the 'new’ universities from the infection with all the diseases of the old universities, but also they will create opportunities the academic human resource in Bulgaria to be multiplied several times.
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