Why talk about “higher education in Eastern Central Europe”? Are there common or similar challenges throughout the region? What are they?

It is difficult to pinpoint with precision and in a comprehensive manner what makes Eastern Central Europe a distinctive region. If such an endeavour is at all possible, which is probably the case, it is something that remains to be accomplished. Common patterns and challenges in the region could nevertheless be identified, some of which appear to be region-specific. Moreover, it is possible to identify their origin or determining factors. They include: history, the geopolitical situation, and economic realities. History has an influence on higher education everywhere. What is relevant here is that this region has a particular history, with many shared characteristics. This includes the relatively recent common communist past, which had a serious impact on higher education models and practices; the even more recent post-communist transition, also impacting heavily on higher education;

and also the more remote past. The territories of the contemporary Eastern Central European countries had been part of a few important empires (such as Habsburg, Tsarist, or Ottoman empires, followed by the “totalitarian empires” of the 20^th centuries) or have been placed between these empires for long periods of time. This historical legacy continues to have implications for higher education until today in defining some of the main characteristics of the higher education systems in these countries, and also with regard to a number of particular challenges. There are also many similarities with regard to the geopolitical situation. Previously parts of the communist camp, all these countries are now defined as “new member states”, given their recent accession to the European Union. As such, they share a number of similarities and common challenges, which include but are not limited to higher education. Finally, although differences exist, the economic situation throughout the countries of the region shows many common features at present and longer-term development paths with many elements of synchronism.

No consistent corpus of research or “wisdom” exists at present regarding what is common in the region or what is different, which could provide a complete answer to the question

“why talk about Eastern Central Europe as a region in higher education?” Still, sufficient insight, including many discrete contributions, is already available suggesting not only that the question is an important one, but also that research perspectives and practical/policy concerns informed by a regional perspective are indeed pertinent and useful, whether they are more theoretically or rather more practically oriented. If a network of higher education experts dedicated to Eastern Central Europe is to be established, studying the elements of communality and specificity throughout the region could be an important endeavour to assume, and one that is at the same time doable. This is a very good area in which such a network could make a contribution.

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If the region is indeed a region, are there any particular challenges that are common to its constitutive countries? If the answer to this question is positive, it would suggest that there might also be some value in coordinated regional efforts, or at least there will be value in trying to learn from others in the region who have faced or are facing similar challenges.

There are important challenges in higher education in the region that are relatively easy to recognize. Some of them are not particular to this part of the world, but others might be indeed quite specific. Some of the challenges all countries of the region are facing in higher education include the rankings, marketization, or funding, to name just a few. These are not new and not at all specific for the region, although in some cases, like funding of university research, they may take particular forms influenced by specific regional evolutions. Other challenges are also not that new, but they are rather specific to the region, such as the accentuated instability of national policies and regulations, or challenges arising from the need to overcome specific and similar path dependencies having to do with the communist past (such as in university governance). There are also new challenges, however, which deserve particular attention. They include sharply declining demographic trends (more accentuated in the region than in other parts of Europe); the corrosion of older public policy narratives and the emergence of new policy narratives that are less supportive for higher education (some of which originate in this very region); and, relatedly, attempts at proposing models from within the region rather than following models (“global” or just coming from elsewhere), even when these new models might be less supportive of effective higher education than those they are trying to replace or distance from.

New demographic trends are reflected primarily in a shrinking population due to negative natural growth and migration. They started to affect higher education in the region at the beginning of the new millennium. The 2015 Trends report (Sursock, 2015) indicates that it is exactly in the countries of the region where these trends are most severely felt.

Universities surveyed in this study from Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia report that they have been seriously affected by negative demographic trends at a rate between 57% and 83%. This rate is only between 18% and 29% in Western European countries such as France, Spain, Italy, or Ireland. The combination of a bad economic situation with negative demographic evolutions makes the situation in Eastern Central Europe particularly challenging for universities.

Another recent challenge that might be particularly relevant for this region has to do with changing public policy narratives. For several decades, powerful policy narratives, such as the knowledge society and the European integration, have helped to mobilize high level of support for higher education both among politicians and policy makers, and among the general public. The times are changing now, and rather in the reverse direction. I have analysed elsewhere (Matei, 2015) how these narratives have worked in the recent past and how they are currently changing. In short, the knowledge society narrative nurtured the belief that economic and social development is to be based on knowledge, that

45 advancement and competitiveness at national level are to be based on knowledge as well.

Given its central role with regard to the production and transmission of knowledge, higher education acquired a central place in the economic and policy discourse of most countries and regions of the world, including Easter Central Europe. A consensus emerged in favour of the idea that more, better and higher levels of higher education are good, in fact necessary, and that the state should support higher education (higher enrolments, more research, etc.) for this reason. One can ask whether this commitment expressed in the discourse regarding higher education based on the knowledge society narrative has been put in practice, but there is no doubt that it has created a favourable political and public policy environment for higher education.

The European integration narrative promoted another belief, or set of beliefs: a more and better integrated Europe is good, and higher education is key to it because it allows to produce and use the knowledge that would make Europe more competitive (even the most competitive knowledge society in the world, according to the initial goals of the EU Lisbon Strategy), but also because higher education could contribute to building a more integrated Europe, perhaps both a European ethos and a European demos, along with a European common market, through student and academic staff mobility, common standards and models, and joint educational and research projects across the EU. Large projects were started influenced by these two narratives, including the projects of an integrated European Higher Education Area or that of the European Research Area, projects related to mobility (e.g. Erasmus) or research (e.g. the EU framework programs or the Horizon 2020). The countries of Eastern Central Europe shared these narratives and took part in these processes and projects, with major consequences for their higher education systems. It is also important to note that these two policy narratives and the accompanying projects and institutional developments in Europe have contributed to create a relatively stable and predictive framework for the evolution of higher education in the region during almost two decades, providing a relative clarity of direction and also of means. Now times are changing, and the change sometimes comes from within the region itself. The force of the belief in the social-economic relevance of knowledge is corroding in the region. The European integration process is now basically stalled and the ideal of a larger and more integrated Europe is contested, quite hotly in some of the countries of the region, with some leading politicians even denouncing “Brussels” as a new colonial monster. This, in turn, affects the policy environment with regard to higher education. Political leaders from the region now openly state that we don’t need more knowledge, or higher educated young people, but more manual workers, because economic competitiveness is to be based in their views on manual labour and not on advanced knowledge. They say we need fewer, not more students, and, in general, less - and not more higher education. Some of them also state that our model of economic and social development should be based on the experiences of Russia, China, and Turkey, and not on a Western European model. There

46 beginning of a new era and perhaps we start walking into an uncharted and unpredictable territory for higher education in Eastern Central Europe.

It can be argued that, historically, the countries of the region have followed models (Western models) in higher education, rather than creating or proposing their own, home-grown models. Is this situation changing at present? We have seen in the period of post-communist transition Western models being adopted (and also adapted), whether they were about governance, curricula and organisation of programs of studies, policy and management models, etc. Could it be the case that some shift is being made currently towards proposing models? The discussion above about new policy narratives indicates developments that originate indeed in the region, and not in Western Europe. It is not clear whether such a change has indeed taken place. It could also be that some new models are not created in the region but imported from the East, like the new, restrictive models of governance and university autonomy being introduced in Hungary. The more general question regarding following models or creating models remains nevertheless a pertinent one. Another possible endeavour for an Eastern Central European network of higher education experts could be to look into what models are being used, where they come from, are they good, bad or even dangerous, what works better.

4. How do/should we address challenges in higher education in Eastern Central