1. Understanding changes in Polish higher education dr Dominik Antonowicz Institute of Sociology Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń

2. Dynamics of higher education Expansion of higher education Institutional diversification of HE Growing international and national competitiveness Europeanization of higher education Commercialisation of science and higher education

3. European universities….. Many decades of state domination have left most European universities with limited autonomy and poor systems of governance. There is a kind of drab uniformity across the sector: many institutions are struggling to cope with growing number of students and inadequate resources, delivering unaspiring teaching in dilapidated buildings. Richard Labert and Nick Butler

4. Can we just copy and paste American system of higher education?

5. Pressure from the world society Institutional landscape Culture, values and norms Mentality of people in HE

6. National context does matter! Tradition of self-governance of academic community Strong political autonomy of the Polish universities Pauperisation of academic community in the communist time High status of university professors The strong sense of higher education being a private club for academic oligarchy. Are you one of us?

7. How can we improve higher education in Poland? 1. Increasing public accountability 2. Modernazing of working conditions 3. Adopting managerial structure of governance 4. Re-structuring of higher education (elite institutions) 5. International evaluation, assessments and benchmarking

8. What should happen to modernize higher education in Poland? Who is strong enough to face all these challenges?

9. Questions to be addressed: 1. Who would benefit/lose from introducing market reforms in higher education in Poland? 2. Is the central government strong enough to introduce reforms in higher education? Can we force ourselves to do more for less? 3. Do we need all of almost 120 public higher education institutions in Poland? 4. As a society, are we ready to reach a pact for higher education as it happened in some transitional countries such as South Africa.

10. Thank you for your attention! dr Dominik Antonowicz Institute of Sociology Nicolaus Copernicus University dominik.antonowicz@uni.torun.pl