Research
Academic Elite Change
Academic elite change as a source of quality oriented higher education reform: the case of Estonia.
Abstract
Two tendencies in the existing research on higher education reform are observable. On the one hand, the research about higher education reform in the CEE/FSU suffers from limited amount of academic interest and methodological shortcomings. On the other hand, the abundance of publications on the reform efforts around the world that in one way or the other confesses the limited success of educational reform progress has lead to tendencies to complicate the theory of (higher) education reform.
Therefore, the research that I intend to undertake as a Ph.D. candidate is to break the chain and return to a simple, elegant and parsimonious understanding of education reform. Rather than adding variables and making the understanding of education reform more complicated, my theory intends to simplify. It aims to show that, as it is often the case in economics and politics, elite change (rather than the change in legislation or governance) is also the fundamental source of real change at universities.
Indeed, in sharp contrast to political and economic elite change, which has attracted a considerable academic interest, extremely little attention has been paid to academic elite turnover and its effects on educational reform. The close case study of Estonian academic elite will be one of the first empirical inquiries, allowing to report how the regime change has effected the faculty turnover and quality of higher education. More particularly, the study to be undertaken to looks for an answer to the question what facilitates the real change in university student's learning experience, in particular, and quality improvement in education, in general. For that, Estonian academic elite reproduction and circulation will be closely observed and examined. My hypothesis is that academic elite circulation leads to actual quality improvements in education such as changes in curriculum, teaching style, evaluation techniques, and course content.
Based on my research, two types of contributions are likely. First, it may well turn out that the research I intend to will contribute to the scholarly literature generally -- by supplying a comprehensive literature review on higher education reform in ECE/FSU countries and outlining the post-communist academic elite identity. More importantly, however, I expect to contribute with a theory claiming that faculty change is the major source of quality improvement in university education. While, the former should attract the interest of the scholars and policy-makers interested in ECE/FSU higher education reform, the latter, intends to attract wider interest among the scholars interested in elite change, academics (as professionals/intellectuals) and quality oriented education reform.
For details please see:
Research proposal (PDF)
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