THE EVOLUTION OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

-COMPARATIVE ANALISYS-

Lecturer Ph.D. Luminita Nicolescu

Academy of Economic Studies

Faculty of International Economic Relations

Abstract

The present paper discusses the evolution of the higher educational systems in the period 1990-2000 in a number of countries from Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania, Russia and Slovakia) through a comparative approach. The comparison is done in the light of a number of aspects such as: legislation, financing systems, degree of centralization/decentralization, educational quality assessment processes and the degree to which countries adopted the Bachelor-Master-Doctorate system, as an organizational mode desired by the European Union, towards which most Central and Eastern European countries are aspiring. The conclusion is that higher education has known transformations after1990 in all studied countries, its evolution being related to the evolution of the economy in the country and of the political structures in certain periods. So countries such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have initially known a fast decentralization followed by a subsequent re-centralization, while Romania and Russia have known also a process of decentralization but in a slow rhythm, at the pace of the economical and political changes in these countries. The desire to integrate in the European Union influences at present the higher education reform in all Central and Eastern European countries.

1. Preliminary considerations

Once the communist systems have been dismantled in Central and Eastern Europe at the end of 1980’s, the unitarist educational systems have been given up in these countries. The nature of subsequent transformations in these transitional countries is somewhere between turning back to the inter-belic systems and the desire to modernize and Europeanize. In the communist years the functioning of the educational systems in these countries had three main objectives: 1) the creation of good socialist citizens, 2) the formation of highly productive individuals and 3) to contribute to the maintaining of the equality in the society. Subsequently the need for change and delimitation from these aims imposed the restructuring of the educational systems after 1990. But in most of these countries the political leaders had rather passive and permissive attitudes vis-à-vis the changes in the educational systems, than active and innovative roles. There were difficulties in promoting clear educational policies and there were numerous ideological debates concerning the direction of development of the education.  The debates varied in different countries, being centered around some or other of the following topics: a) Europeanization or nationalism; b) national or international education; c) public or private education; d) monocolour or diversified education and e) centralized or decentralized education (Offe, 1997).

            The present paper takes into discussion and tries to compare the evolution of the educational systems (through the example of higher education) after 1990, in a number of countries from Central and Eastern Europe, namely Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Romania, Russia and Slovakia.

            In all these countries the main transformations in the field of education have been realized through public educational policies. Public policies are those policies that are generated by governments and that have a direct influence on individuals (such as students and profesors) and on organizations (such as universities) and are developed and implemented through the state bureaucracy (Hough, 1984). The processes of policy development are generally divided in three stages: 1) the formulation and authorization stage; 2) the implementation stage and 3) the evaluation stage of educational policies.

In the stages of formulation and authorization of the policy, a number of actors can be involved: from organizations such as the Prime Minister, the Education Minister, professors’ unions, parents’ groups up to informal actors, such as diverse interests groups, political parties and media. Specific to the Central and Eastern European countries is the opacity of the policies formulation process and the involvement of a reduced number of factors, majority of them being officials, the civic society’s contribution to educational policy formulation being generally minimum.

The stage of the education policy implementation is influenced by a multitude of factors such as: the clear or ambiguous policy formulation, the design of simple and direct programs to implement policy, the involvement and the capacity of the bureaucratic system to participate to the implementation and the environmental factors (the support or the opposition from community).

Specific to Central and Eastern European societies is the ambigous formulation of policies, the inexistence of concrete programs and implementing methodologies as well as the incapacity of the bureaucratic system (ministerial in the first place) to implement policies. Through the lack of transparency of the educational policy  process, the community and other factors that will be affected by policies are not involved in the policies’  design and are not even informed. Consequently, policies are often not understood by those who are supposed to implement them and their support is minimal.

The policy evaluation stage is the last step in the policy process and is the step that has to end any process in any field. The educational policies’ evaluation have different forms, from the internal evaluation to the external evaluation, the final evaluation or on-going evaluation, the results evaluation or the process evaluation. The evaluation’s aim should be to provide valid information about the money, time and human resources constraints and limits for the implementation of that policy.

In the case of Central and Eastern European countries policy evaluation processes are not well defined and many times they consist of only incidental feed-back for the ministerial officials, that means that they practically inexistent.

            The changes in higher education from a number of Central and Eastern European countries will be briefly analyzed in order to make a comparison in the evolution of the reforms in education in these countries. Aspects such as 1) legislation, 2) financing of higher education, 3) the degree of centralization/decentralization and the academic autonomy, 4) the introduction of some systems for quality evaluation and 5) the introduction of a new system of educational programs in higher education, will be the center of our discussion.

2. Comparisons regarding higher education legislation

In all studied countries there were major legislative changes after 1990. The Czech Republic and Slovakia (when still Czechoslovakia) and Bulgaria were the first to promulgate changes in higher education starting immediately in 1990. In both countries, the new legislation introduced academic and managerial autonomy, as freedom of decision making regarding academic decisions (programs, curriculum) and other types of decisions (activities organization), aspects difficult to apply when financial autonomy was lacking. In the Czech Republic the 1990 law stipulated administrative autonomy to be manifested through the possibility to set up and dismantle sections, as well as maximum decision power regarding personnel  promotion at the level of university – the Ministry approval was no longer necessary. In all 3 countries there were enacted subsequent laws (in 1995 in Bulgaria, in 1996 in Slovakia and in 1998 in the Czech Republic) in order to re-centralized higher education.

                In Romania, only in 1995 it was promulgated an Education Law, law that considered the educational decentralization at all levels through granting a higher autonomy. Although this law has been finally enacted in 1995, its application was delayed until the end of 1997, due to the lack of  a concrete implementation methodology.

In Russia the education law has been promulgated in 1992, quite recently after the changes at the beginning of the decade, but its main stipulations were: education is a national priority, ensuring free access to education, ensuring high income for education staff, stipulations that had a minimum effect in the initiation of substantial changes.

Interesting is the fact that the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria promulgated special laws regarding higher education, while the other countries promulgated general laws (with only special stipulations for higher education), fact that shows some countries have higher interest regarding this level of education. In Romania there was promulgated a law regarding the accreditation of higher education institutions in 1993, as a specific law for higher education, law that was enacted from the necessity to ensure minimum quality standards in higher education  once private higher education institutions have evolved, starting from scratch but without any legislation  reglementing it and with no minimum requirements for their establishment.

Table no. 1. Central and Eastern European legislation in the period 1990-2000

 3) Comparative approach to the financing of higher education

Higher education was exclusively financed from the state budget prior to 1990 in all countries. Due to the decrease of the economic growth in these countries on the one hand and the diminishing of the percentage designated to education in general as well as that designated to higher education on the other hand, the financial resources from state have became  insufficient for ensuring a good activity in higher education in recent years. Therefore at different moments in time (see table no. 2) in all these countries, except Slovakia, the financing funds from state have been suplemented by other funds. The difference consisted of the way different suplimentary forms have been introduced: while in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic there were introduced compulsory tuition fees for all students, in Romania and Russia there were introduced tuition fee paying  places (financed by students) together with the free places (financed by the state). In the Czech Republic the tuition fees are 200$/year, that was considered by Tucker (2000) as being a symbolic amount of money. These sums are considered as not being so symbolic in other countries with a lower standard of living (for instance Romania) where the yearly tuition fees vary between 400-600$/year, these taxes representing the main source of finance for private universities. In Bulgaria the percentage of the students’ participation at the total expenses/student is of 30% (internal document, Education Ministry Bulgaria). In Romania and Russia where the suplimentary financing sources are due to the Education Ministry’s approval for a number of places charging tuition fees, are actually the countries were private higher education is largely extended. In these countries has been manifested a demand for educational services that could not be satisfied by the existing higher education institutions (state), fact that generated the setting up of private higher education institutions. State higher education took over the method by introducing tuition fee paying places.

These different methods of introducing tuition fees illustrate different approaches to higher education: on the one hand the idea that everybody has to participate at the costs involved by higher education (the Czech Republic and Bulgaria), this being used as a modality to stimulate  the increase in the quality of the educational act (besides the financial support offered) based on the idea that “who pays also requires a higher quality, as opposed to the passive attitude of those who receive free educational services” (Tucker, 2000). On the other hand it is supported the idea that the state has to guarantee  the right to free education to the capable individuals (in Romania, Russia and Slovakia).

Tabel nr. 2. Financing aspects in Central and Eastern Europe

4. Different degrees of centralization/decentralization of the higher education systems

The first countries to react to the super-centralized regime of the communist period were the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. They have taken the first legislative measures for decentralization starting 1990. The degree of decentralization was complete and consisted of setting up new faculties and new study programs as well as the possibility to look for suplimentary financial sources in Bulgaria (Slantcheva, 2000) and through the possibility to organize on their own, setting up new departments and new faculties, to hire and promote academic staff at the level of department (and not faculty) in the Czech Republic (Tucker, 2000).

            Consequently in Bulgaria higher education developed a lot in 1990-1995, by introducing new programs and tuition fee paying places along the places subsidied by the state, starting from the beginning of 1990. Taking into account the fact that the increase in the autonomy and the development of higher education was not supported through state funds, the tuition fee payable places have known a large development and together with them the admission exigency decreased. This left space for corruption and the possibility to ”buy” diplomas (Georgieva, 1999; Boyadjieva, 1999).

            In the Czech Republic many of the liberties conveyed towards abuses coming especially from the old generation of academics who took over the control and tried to continue to manage based on principles used before 1990, in this way managing “the perpetuation of incompetence and politicianism in Czech higher education” (Tucker, 2000).

            We can practically notice that this immediate decentralization did not have the expected effects due to the immaturity of those societies at those moments in time, that led to a subsequent re-centralization in both societies, in 1995 in Bulgaria and in 1998 in the Czech Republic. These changes in education followed the political changes in these countries, that evoluted from liberalism in 1990 to pro-socialism at the following elections.

At present both countries have re-centralized higher education through different measures. In Bulgaria through  the state control over setting the course content, over the study programs and specializations: these courses and programs have to be in concordance with national standards, the number of students that can be admitted both at state and private universities at each specialization are set by state as well as the level of tuition fees.  It was kept a little degree of academic autonomy (as compared to the super-centralization before 1990) through the fact that universities could set on their own the admission procedures as well as the length of semesters and holidays. In the Czech Republic the degree of re-centralization was small, the main new measures being the introduction of partial tuition fees  for all students, of the accreditation system and the fact that the promotion of the academic staff is done through the approval of the Ministry of Education: full professors are named by the president of the Czech Republic. Universities kept the autonomy regarding the setting up and the dismantling of programs and departments. Also hiring new academic staff is done according to the internal rules of each university.

            In Russia and Slovakia the degree of centralization in higher education is high at present. In Russia there are educational state standards based on which academic decision is highly restricted and controlled. These state educational standards define the curriculum for each course, the course content and the number of hours designated to each disciplines (Davydova, 2000).

            In Slovakia, after the decentralization initiated in 1990, a re-centralization of higher education took place once the Government was changed in 1994, by promulgating a new law in 1995. The state control over universities increased through the transfer of numerous decisions at Ministry level: the internal structure and the organization of universities, the number of accepted students by each university, study programs and the promotion of the academic staff. All these were based on the belief of the Prime Minister of the time, Mr. Merciar that “it is necessary to strengthen the influence of the state bodies over the activities of the academic community” (Malova and Lastic, 2000). In the last period there were discussions to grant an increased autonomy to higher education, and a law in this respect is expected.

            In Romania, immediately after 1990 the degree of higher education centralization was maintained high (practically no change took place from this point of view) until 1995 when  there was promulgated the education law that allows a higher degree of autonomy to universities: the possibility to organize the admission process on their own and to set the admission conditions, the introduction of new study programs and the curriculum for each discipline. Due to the inexistence of some methodological norms  to apply the law’s provisions, as well as due to inertia at the university management level (very little used to take decisions on their own) the practical implementation of these provisions allowing a higher autonomy in universities  was postponed until 1997, when the appointment of a new Minister of Education speed up the process. There were designed methodological norms (concrete ways) to apply this law and there were made amendments at this law in order to increase the universitary autonomy. For instance in 1999, it was introduced the financing system based on multiple sources: the base financing 70% (from the state budget) and the suplimentary financing of 30% (from sources that the university can look for itself) (Korka, 2000).

Table no. 3 The degree of centralization/decentralization in higher education in Central and Eastern Europe

5. The introduction of different quality evaluation systems in higher education

At present, the evaluation of the quality of higher education  is one of the major problems of the educational policies in the whole world. In Western Europe this became a major aspect only in 1980’s, and in Eastern Europe in 1990’s. The evaluation of the quality of education in general (including higher education) is linked to the trial to apply the principle “value for money” in higher education through the introduction of new concepts for educational quality and of new evaluation procedures (Peace Lenn, 1993).

The main forms through which the quality control is manifested in Central and Eastern Europe are the accreditation processes of higher education institutions when being set up and the periodical evaluation of the educational process. Accreditation takes place at the set up of a new higher education unit  or after a number of years from the setting up, as it is the case of Romania (at the setting up universities are only authorized to function), and the evaluation of the quality of the educational process takes place once at 5 years. In Russia the evaluation process of the quality of education is strongly regulated  through the existence of a number of State Educational Standards, that state a number of conditions that have to be fulfilled at the level of discipline and curriculum. Even though this system is meant to be a way to maintain a high level of the educational act, it is appreciated as being restrictive and irrelevant taking into account that, the quality of the educational act depends highly on the professors qualifications and on the existing facilities and not on meeting some quantitative norms (Davydova, 2000). The accreditation and the periodical evaluation are new processes in this part of the world, and their formalization took place either through setting up special agencies for this activity, or through setting up temporary commissions appointed by the Ministry of Education to fulfil this purpose (see table no. 4).

            The activity of these bodies consists in the development and approval of procedures and documents for the accreditation process, in evaluating projects for setting up new universities, faculties and specializations, in evaluating the activity of higher education and not accrediting those that do not fulfill the pre-established requirements. In Romania, Russia and Bulgaria there are bodies that were set up with the purpose of accrediting and evaluating the quality of the educational process, being subordinated to the Ministry of Education in each country.

Table no. 4 Accreditation and evaluation systems in Central and Eastern Europe

In the Czech Republic and in Slovakia the accreditation and the evaluation process of the educational process is done by a number of commissions/committees formed of professors and appointed on a temporary basis with this sole purpose. Their componence can be changed from one process of accreditation to another. This fact brought about corruption in both countries as the circle of evaluators is small and they count on a mutual indulgence in the evaluation process or put it differently: “In a small academic system, through the accreditation of a program you make friends and through the rejection of accrediting a program you make enemies” (Tucker, 2000).

6. The introduction of the 3 level system: Bachelor-Master-Doctorate- a priority in higher education

The introduction a of the 3 level system Bachelor-Master-Doctorate is a policy followed by a number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe with the purpose to integrate in the European educational structures as a condition for adhering to European Union.  The introduction of this system was part of the reforming measures of some countries in Western Europe, such as: the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and Finland. The introduction of this educational structure had as main objectives an increase in the international comparability of qualifications, stimulating to co-operate European higher education institutions, stimulating mobilities of students and professors in order to support the economic, commercial and financial markets at European level. Excepting Finland that really reformed its higher education, in the other West European countries the new system was added up to the old system (Beverwik and Lianne van de Maat, 1999). Practically the lessons we receive from our neighbors in Western Europe do not show that the introduction of this system wouldn’t have a high rate of success.

A part of the Central and Eastern European countries also decided that there is the need to reform the higher education system through the introduction of the 3 level system Bachelor-Master-Doctorate. The main motivation is the integration of the European educational systems and the sincronization with the more efficient and modern educational systems in order to be able to adhere to European Union. Objectives such as promoting the co-operation between universities in different countries through mobilities of professors and students have been also taken into account.

The way this structure has been introduced differed in the 3 studied countries: Bulgaria, Romania and Russia.

In Bulgaria, the existent structures (the traditional 4 or 5 years long ones) have been divided in two: the first 3 (4) years representing the Bachelor level and the last year has been re-organized as a Master.

In Romania, the existent program (of 4 and 5 years) has been kept as representing the Bachelor level or licence diploma, to which was added one more year: initially as specialized studies (after the French model) and subsequently also as Master (that sometimes is longer, up to two years).

In Russia, the Bachelor level was formed of the first 3(4) years of the traditional system, after which following one more year leads to getting the “diploma” and following more 1-2 years leads to getting a  Master degree.

The consequences were that in the countries where the existing structures have been fragmented by the reform, students continue their studies until they obtain a number of years of education equal with the number of years from the prior system. In Russia almost all students go through the 5^th year in order to get a diploma, and in Bulgaria those who finishes only the Bachelor level are regarded as half “Masters” (Tomotova, 1998) and consequently all want to go further and get their Master.

In Romania, the new post-graduate programs, such as the specialized studies or the Master have been added to the existing programs. Practically there were new disciplines included in these products but the way of organizing these programs did not change at all, limiting any possible qualitative changes.

In all 3 countries the way these programs have been created Bachelor-Master-Doctorate through normative measures generated mainly quantitative changes (number of years, number of hours/course) but no changes of qualitative nature have been brought to the educational process.

Finally we can conclude that in all studied countries higher education systems have known changes after 1990. These changes have been generated by a new legislation: there have been promulgated two series of laws regarding higher education in all studied countries. The specific features of each country has been reflected in the evolution of the educational systems and in the implementation of the educational policies. The reforms have been generally made from top to bottom and the tendency is of centralization, as a result either of a process of decentralization immediately after 1990, or by maintaining or diminishing in a very low rhythm the degree of centralization specific to the period prior to 1990. At the same time the wish of the Central and Eastern European countries to adhere to European Union determined the introduction of the 3 level system, Bachelor-Master-Doctorate after the anglo-saxon model, system towards which are heading a large part of Europe’s countries.

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