Higher Education Policy 15 (2002) 263 – 276 www.elsevier.com/locate/highedpol
Perspectives from East and Central Europe Janina J&oz& wiak Institute Statistics and Demography, Warsaw School of Economics and Deputy Chairman, State Committee for Scientic Research, Warsaw, Poland
1. Transformation of higher education systems in Central and Eastern Europe1 During the 1990s all countries of the Central and undergoing signi,cant changes in systems of higher varying extent—in/uenced by the Soviet concept of Despite many di1erences in the solutions applied serve the following general characteristics: • • • • • •
Eastern Europe region have been education which before were—in education and research. in speci,c countries we may ob-
regaining universities’ autonomy and academic freedom, restructuring universities (mission, curricula, programmes, organizational structures), changes in systems of ,nancing universities, emerging non-state sector of higher education, increment of the size of students’ population, internationalization of universities. 2
For instance, in Estonia (cf. Aaviksoo, 2000) during the 1990s the level of autonomy of Estonian universities increased notably. Now the universities are free to open new teaching and research programmes, to de,ne the size of student enrolments, to employ professors and determine their salaries. In Slovakia (cf. Hrabinsk&a, CEP, 1997), the Higher Education Act of 1992 brought the provision of the basic academic rights and freedoms, such as freedom of Based on: Research Management Issues. Regional Overview: Central and Eastern Europe, report for UNESCO. E-mail address:
[email protected] (J. J&oz& wiak). 1 Selected non-OECD countries from the Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Russia, Slovakia) and Poland, are considered in the article. 2 The notion of “university” hereafter denotes all kinds of higher education institutions o1ering education at university level, i.e. technical universities, economic universities, etc. This separation of di1erent types of universities according to the disciplines taught has been typical for the countries of the Eastern European region.
c 2002 International Association of Universities. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. 0952-8733/02/$22.00 All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 5 2 - 8 7 3 3 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 1 6 - 8
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scienti,c research and of artistic creation, right to elect self-governing bodies. The Act has delegated considerable powers to self-governing bodies of higher education institutions. Similar changes took place in other countries of the region. Higher education in Central and Eastern Europe was radically reconstructed on a scale and at a speed which never had occurred in Western Europe, although solutions applied in di1erent countries of the region di1ered in many respects—depending on the level of success in implementation of new socio-economic and political system in the country (Scott, 2000). De,ning a clear research mission of universities has been one of the most important elements of transformation of higher education in Central and Eastern Europe. Research is now much more important for universities in the region than ten years ago, when the universities focused on teaching while basic research was performed by academies of science and applied industrial research by branch institutes. In the 1990s in many countries integration of research institutes once managed separately by academies of science or ministries into universities took place. Moreover, also internal integration of research and teaching units occurred in universities and research performance is the major criterion in academic sta1 promotion in all countries of the region. All this resulted in improvement of links between teaching and research. The process of re-incorporating research into universities and restructuring the research systems has varied from country to country. In Russia, university research has progressed very little and the Academy of Sciences has maintained the importance it had in the communist period, although the nation’s R&D e1ort has been reduced signi,cantly (OECD, 1998, p. 31). In Poland, network of institutes of the Academy of Sciences and branch institutes continue to play a role in the research e1ort. On the other hand, university research in Poland (contrary to other countries) was largely developed also in former period and in the 1990s proportion of the university research in the total state budget expenditure on research increased from 23% to almost 40%. According to Scott (2000) “until 1989, higher education [across the region] was almost, without exception, entirely dependent on state funding. Institutional allocations were based on (adjusted) historic teaching and related costs and budgets were in/exibly determined with institutions having almost no discretion to spend their allocations in di1erent ways. The small number of institutions which received funding for research either had contracts for speci,c projects or were commissioned to undertake speci,c projects by the relevant Ministry”. Without going into detail, we can state that today in most EE countries the tendencies in central budget funding of universities are as follows: whilst it is associated with student enrollments weighted with a cost factor; research funding is separated from the teaching grant; the proportion of subsidies from the state budget in the total revenues of universities is decreasing. Numbers of students enrolled in the higher education system of Central and Eastern European countries almost doubled in the last decade of 20th century. The ,gures di1er from country to country but the growing tendency in access and enrollment ratios is common across the region.
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Fig. 1. Distribution of students by ,eld of study and region, 1985 and 1995 (in percentage).
There are several reasons for this rapid growth: emerging private sector of higher education and its dynamic expansion; law regulations allowing public universities to decide about number of students they enroll and, at the same time, to charge a part of students with tuition fee (which has become a signi,cant part of universities’ income). The increase in number of students is associated with signi,cant shift in distribution of enrollments by disciplines and the most notable phenomenon is growing students’ interest in Social Sciences and Economics and Business Administration (Fig. 1). In all countries under study the reforms of the 1990s made it possibile to establish doctoral programmes at the universities. Such programmes as a part of (postgraduate= third level) studies did not exist before or were organized by the research institutes of the Academies of Sciences (case of Baltic countries). Regardless di1erences in these programmes, the common feature is that their content usually is directly related to laboratory and library research while regular courses on research methods comprise a minor component of the programme; at the same time, doctoral students are expected to act as part time teaching assistants which may have a positive e1ect on integration of teaching and research. In Poland, the number of doctoral students increased dramatically from 2700 persons in 1990 to 22,240 (Fig. 2). This is partly due to the system of funding higher education in Poland: under the formula, the cost factor for doctoral students is ,ve times as high as this factor for regular students. Similarly, in Estonia number of participants in doctor courses doubled in the period of 1995 –1999. This process of restructuring universities
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Fig. 2. Doctorates awarded by disciplines, Poland and Latvia, 1999 (percentages). Source: CSO (2000), Statistical Yearbook of Latvia (2000).
in the CEE region also opened more possibilities to create interdisciplinary programmes of studies as well as to give more emphasis to inter- and multidisciplinarity of academic research. Internationalization of the universities across the region is re/ected, inter alia, in their participation in European networks of higher education institutions—e.g. TEMPUS Programme played here a very important role. From the point of view of research the most important is eligibility of the countries considered in the study for the Fifth Framework Programme of the European Union, but also other programmes like COPERNICUS, EUREKA, ACE, COST, PECO, SCITECH, etc., have been helping to integrate the CEE countries research into European system.
2. Universities and research Although the organisation of research and experimental development in Central and Eastern Europe di1ers from country to country, higher education institutions play a key role in R&D. Except for Poland, all countries considered experienced drop in size of R and D personnel in 1990s. This tendency can be observed both in number of researchers per million population, and also in absolute number of the total R&D personnel. The number of R&D personnel per thousand in the labour force, is very low as compared to the European Union. In 1997 it equalled to 9.4 for the EU and 4.0 for Latvia, 4.9 for Poland, 5.6 for Romania and 6.8 for Slovakia (Gavigan, Ottiksch, & Makraun, 1999), the only exception is Russia with 14.7 per thousand labour force. Also, level of expenditure on R&D measured with its proportion in GDP, has been declining in the CEE region. There is no common pattern of the distribution of R&D personnel across the region, regardless of the criterion of the distribution: by type of organisation or by sector of
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Fig. 3. Structure of employed in R&D by disciplines, selected countries. Source: Statistical Yearbook of Estonia, 2000; Statistical Yearbook of Russia, 1999; CSO, Poland, 2001.
performance. For instance, in the late 1990s in Poland around 60% of R&D personnel were employed in higher education sector (22% and 18% in productive and general service sectors, respectively) while for Russia the respective data equalled: 7%, 65% and 28%; in Bulgaria the proportion of those engaged in R&D in higher education is higher than in Russia (35%) and simultaneously the contribution of the general service sector is extremely high: around 52% (UNESCO, 1998a). The relatively high proportion of R&D personnel employed in the higher education sector is characteristic for Poland and Baltic countries (Lithuania and Latvia ca. 50%, Estonia ca. 60%) with the tendency to increase, while the lowest proportion has been observed in Russia and Romania (9%). Analysis of the data can give a ground for a conclusion that the contribution of university research to national research activity is the higher the more advanced is restructuring research and higher education system in the country. No common pattern of R&D personnel structure (total and within universities) by disciplines in di1erent countries of the CEE region can be observed (cf. Fig. 3). The role and contribution of universities in research and development in Eastern European countries is also re/ected in expenditures on R&D in higher education sector. Again, di1erences between the countries are signi,cant. Generally, percentage of expenditures on research and development in higher education in GERD (total
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Fig. 4. Current expenditure on R&D by type of research, selected countries. Source: Statistical Yearbooks of Lithuania, 2000; Russia, 1999; Slovakia, 2000; CSO, Poland, 2001.
domestic expenditure on R&D) is lower than the percentage of R&D personnel employed in universities. Across the CEE region this indicator varies from more than 50% in Estonia, almost 28% in Poland to around 8% in Bulgaria, around 6% in Slovakia and Russia and only slightly more than 4% in Romania. As a general trend a gradual shift from basic research towards more applied research has occurred in the countries of the CEE region. There are several reasons for this tendency, and one of them is a funding pressure, especially under schemes of the European Union programmes (like 5th Framework Plan) which favour applied and industry-oriented research as compared to fundamental research. This shift towards more industry-oriented research is also re/ected in an increase of proportion of expenditure on development in GERD (cf. Fig. 4) although reasons for this may be completely di1erent: in Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia it is due to an increase of participation of industry in R&D, in Russia it is connected with a decrease of contribution of the higher education sector to the performance of R&D (UNESCO, 1998b). Obviously proportions of expenditure on basic and applied research depend on type of a university and discipline (Fig. 5). For instance, in Poland in 1999, the proportions of expenditures in higher education on basic and applied research are di1erent from discipline to discipline. E.g., in Natural Sciences 80% of funds is spent for basic research, 16%—on applied research and 4%—on development in Social Sciences and
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Table 1 Expenditure on R&D by source of funding (percentage) Country \ Sector Estonia 1995 1997 Poland 1995 1999 Romania 1995 1998 Russia 1995 1998
Business enterprise
Government
12.9 7.7
71.3 67.4
24.1 30.6
60.2 58.5
22.8 13.5
57.5 52
17.4 17.3
60.5 52.2
Source: UNESCO Yearbook, 1999; Statistical Yearbook of Romania, 1999; Statistical Yearbook of Russia, 1999; CSO, 2001.
Humanities the percentage distribution is: 90%, 9% and 1% while in Technical Sciences the respective proportions are as follows: 36%, 40% and 24%. Generally, in the region only a relatively small proportion of research is contracted by industry or performed on the base of university—industry relationships; there doesn’t exist a tradition of cooperation between universities and industry on the one hand, and on the other hand—there is no suRcient incentives for enterprises (especially SME) to invest into research and development. In this respect, basic features of the Research and Development sector that are common for the countries of the region can be de,ned as follows: • majority of R and D funds come from the state budget, • research institution are in principle separated from industry and act in a distance from the market, • intermediate links or instruments for dissemination of research results and for transfer of technology to industry are lacking. Let us consider the overall distribution of R&D expenditure by source of funding ,rst. General tendency in the European Union is a prevalence of funds from business enterprise sector in GERD, which is not the case for the CEE countries. There does not exist common pattern both in distribution of GERD by source of funds and its changes over time. In Poland, the percentage of business enterprise funds increased from 24% to more than 30% in the ,ve-year period, with more or less stable contribution of governmental sector of about 60%; in Russia a decrease of proportion of government funds occurred with unchanged proportion of the business enterprise sector, while in Estonia and Romania proportion of funds from both sources decreased slightly due to a signi,cant increment of contribution of funds from abroad (from 9.6 to 14.9%) in the former case and of own sources in the latter case (from 13.4% to 27.4%) (Table 1).
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Fig. 5. Structure of expenditure on R&D in the higher education sector, Poland, 1999. Source: CSO, Poland, 2001.
Coming back to the evaluation of the university–industry co-operation, for instance in Poland in 1999 about 24% of business enterprise expenditure on R&D was performed in the higher education. On the other hand, share of R&D performed in the higher education sector funded by business enterprise amounted to ca. 9%, while the proportion of government-funded expenditure equalled around 83%. In Romania, business enterprise-funded expenditure on R&D in the higher education sector amounted to 18.6 percent in 1995 and decreased to 12.2 percent in 1998. Also in Lithuania in 1999, the share of government-funded expenditure on R&D performed in the higher education sector was as high as 74%; 15% came from “customers funds”, containing, inter alia, funds from business enterprise sector. It is important to emphasize that the awareness of necessity to create university– industry links has been growing in the universities of the CEE. Di1erent universities established di1erent kinds of spin-o1 ,rms and intra-university centres to promote and develop university–research co-operation. There are a lot of good examples in various countries of the region; for instance, Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania) created the Business Incubator and Innovation Centre; Technical Universities in Poland have their technology transfer centres; technological transfer units and spin-o1s were created in several faculties of the Babes-Bolyai University, Romania, etc. (UNESCO, 2000). In research policy formulation encouraging and strengthening of the university– industry relationship play an important role. This approach is fostered by the EU research programmes (like, e.g. the 5th FP) which are more industry oriented.
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3. Institutional aspects of university research management Restoration of research within universities inserted one more dimension to the process of their institutional restructuring. University management became a challenging task for autonomous universities and research seems to be rather tricky segment of the institution to govern. Several problems emerge here. First of all, the question of balance between research and teaching exists within universities: research performance is basic criterion for selection and promotion of sta1, while the main responsibility of individual academics is teaching. Next, de,ning research priorities is extremely diRcult within university with very dispersed scienti,c interests of the sta1. Then questions of research quality evaluation as well as including research into internal quality assurance system arise. And, last but not least, allocation of limited funds among various disciplines and units has to be de,ned by university leaders. Di1erent solutions and strategies in this respect have been adopted by di1erent universities. However, regardless of speci,c solutions, usually within university one can ,nd a university academic commission and administrative unit that are responsible for organisation (management) of research and vice-rector for research activity. There exist a lot of obstacles for increasing interdisciplinarity of research in universities of the CEE countries and one of them is traditional structure of discipline-based faculties composing the institution. Low level of skills of both academic and administrative management with regard to research is an important weakness of the governance of the universities in the region. Especially, growth of competitiveness of higher education environment and changing patterns of research funding require more entrepreneurial approach to research management and, consequently, new skills of the sta1 (at di1erent levels of university structure) are needed. According to OECD=IMHE (2000) the new skills needed by university sta1 should cover the following areas of activities: • • • • •
research-fund raising, managing transdisciplinary research and partnership with outside organisations, business management, intellectual property issues, evaluation of research performance.
Increasing demand for such skills results both from changing environment and changing role of Universities in Europe—not only in the CEE region. International organisations, like the European University Association might play a key role in training of academic and administrative sta1 in order to improve management of research in the CEE universities. Similarly to other European countries, no comprehensive system of research evaluation is applied by universities of the CEE region. Of course, the question of quality of research is a matter of concern both for universities and external funding bodies and its assessment is being carried out at individual and institutional levels.
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The responsibility for carrying out the evaluation of research can be located at different levels of a system: • • • •
government or a government agency, an intermediate body between government and universities, a collective organisation established by the universities, individual institutions.
In the CEE countries two of the solutions are commonly applied: a government agency for the evaluation of universities (or of their units) and institutions for the evaluation of research performance of individual academics, collective university organisations also exist but usually they have been establish for accreditation purposes. As far as individual academics are concerned, they are submitted to an evaluation of their research performance at least several times at di1erent stages of their professional career but also periodically within the university. Usually this evaluation is of quantitative nature and the following elements are taken into account: number of publications, participation in research projects, international co-operation. In Poland, every individual university teacher and=or researcher has to be evaluated at least every fourth year of his=her career. In Lithuania, every academic is assessed every ,ve years to prove his=her ,tness for the position held or to be held. In Slovakia, academic sta1 members are evaluated every three to ,ve years. Similar solutions have been applied in other countries of the region. However, quite often they are considered by the universities as formal restrictions and not a part of a quality assurance system within the university. The question of teaching and research quality is of concern for many universities in the countries considered; some of them have been building di1erent kind of structures for quality management, e.g. Quality Assurance Units or launching various activities in this respect like e.g., peer-review of university units. However, these activities ,rst of all are more teaching than research-oriented and, besides, they do not create a comprehensive system of quality assurance linking quality with decision making and management of the university. 4. Funding of university research Funding of research in the considered countries of the CEE region has the following common characteristics: • according to di1erent indicators the level of funding is lower than in the European Union or OECD countries, • decreasing trend (with some exceptions) in level of funding was observed in the 1990s, Figs. 6 –8 show these basic features of research funding in the region. However, simultaneously share of R&D expenditure in higher education sector in the total GERD increased, especially GERD ,nanced by the government. In Poland this latter share increased from less than 23% in 1991 to 39.7% in 1999.
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Fig. 6. GERD per capita, selected countries (in USD PPP). Source: CSO, Poland, 2001.
Fig. 7. Ratio GERD=GDP, selected countries (in percentage). Source: CSO, Poland, 2001.
The systems of funding university research from the central budgets vary across the region. In Poland funding of universities research from the state budget is threefold. The ,rst kind of funding is grants awarded by Government directly to faculties, the second
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Fig. 8. GERD ,nanced by government as a percentage of GDP, selected countries. Source: CSO, Poland, 2001.
one is a lump-sum awarded by the Ministry of Education to the university (and then distributed within it according to a research policy or priorities of this university); the third type of funding is a competitive application-based system of grants awarded to research teams or individual researchers (by the State Committee for Scienti,c Research). In Latvia only research projects are ,nanced by the government—there is no basic funding of institutions nor funding of infrastructure. In Estonia funds for university research are allocated by a special body of the Ministry of Education directly to the given research unit. cf. Aaviksoo, 2000. It appears that di1erent solutions in building the new systems of funding of the university research have been applied in di1erent countries. What is common for the CEE countries—new sources for research funding have emerged in the region. First of all, these are funds from abroad, role of which has increased signi,cantly in most of the countries. For instance, in Estonia the proportion of these funds in GERD increased to 14.9% in 1997 (9.6% in 1995), in Latvia the respective proportions equalled to 26.9% (22.8), in Romania to 3.2 percent in 1995 and in Russia: 7.4% in 1997 (c.f. UNESCO Yearbook, 1999). Only in Poland and Slovakia this share does not exceed 2 percent of GERD. Other new sources of funding research activity, are non-pro,t organizations and private funds. Their contribution is not very high; nevertheless they re/ect increasing entrepreneurship of universities in their approach towards research—fund raising. Research funds remain a minor part of the budgets of universities in the CEE. There are signi,cant di1erences between universities, which to much extent can result from a research specialization of a speci,c institution. Nevertheless, it seems that the focus of universities on teaching is the main reason for the low contribution of research funds into university budgets.
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The proportion of research and consultancy funds varies from only 0.2 percent (the University of Ruse, Bulgaria) to about 30% (the Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania, UNESCO CEPES, 2000). As it has already been mentioned, the universities of the CEE region are much more teaching than research-oriented, although the process of re-integration research into the universities has started more than 10 years ago. This relatively low share of research funds in overall budgets of universities may re/ect also the economic situation of the countries. Moreover, almost in all countries considered the fall of share of research funds occurs together with a growth of share of funds from student tuition fees. In the universities mentioned here there does not exist any common or similar mechanism of allocation of research funds. Research funds usually come to the universities for speci,ed projects. As a rule, these funds are charged with overhead fees that are used to cover costs of the central administration of the university. However, the universities make di1erent attempts to support e.g., interdisciplinary research projects within the university or to allot a part of their resources to priority research programmes. The common problem is that research priorities of the CEE universities—if any—are de,ned as a “sum” of research interests of individual academics or teams rather than a result of conscious choice of the most important research disciplines or topics. This is an e1ect of low level of research funding and a pressure of academic sta1 to distribute the funds uniformly instead of concentrating them in selected areas. 5. Concluding remarks According to the Confederation of European Union Rectors’ Conferences (2000), the following experiences are the most important for development and improvement of research: • • • • • •
networking entrepreneurship regional and local knowledge transfer and co-operation cross-disciplinary collaboration internal quality care and quality assurance at institutional level training of researchers.
From the perspective of the universities of the CEE region which are at the developmental stage of university research, two of these activities play a crucial role: networking and training of researchers. The best way for the CEE universities to gain proper experience in this respect is to participate in international networks, research projects and programmes. Organizing an international research school may be an effective way to provide such opportunities. The most important European programme available to the considered countries is, the 5th Framework Programme which provides opportunities for the CEE universities to enter networks of research institutions, to get more research funds and to de,ne research priorities. Training of researchers is also an element of the 5th FP. The programme
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supports and fosters multi- and inter-disciplinary approach to research as well as cooperation with other research institutions and business and industry. The 5th Framework Programme and other European research programmes, like COST, COPERNICUS or PHARE are considered by many universities in the region as having the greatest impact on their research and institutional development and restructuring. On an analysis of the university research problems in the CEE countries, one can conclude that the weakest element of the research systems in these countries is institutional research management and, ,rst of all, a lack of appropriate skills of the administrative sta1. This de,nitely requires a lot of investment in human capital through training and education. To some extent the same concerns leaders of the universities in the region. International institutions and university organizations could play very meaningful and useful role in this respect. References Aaviksoo, J. (2000). Estonia: The University of Tartu. In: Ten years after and looking ahead: A review of the transformations of higher education in Central and Eastern Europe, UNESCO CEPES, 2000, Bucharest. CEP. (1997). Education for transition. Part III. Higher education policy in Central and Eastern Europe— country reports, Budapest. CSO. (2001). Science and technology in Poland, 1999, Warszawa. Gavigan, J.P., Ottiksch, M., & Makraun, S. (1999). Knowledge and learning. Towards learning Europe. Futures Report Series 14, Joint Research Centre European Commission and Institute for Perspective Technological Studies, Seville. OECD. (1998). University Research in Transition, Paris. OECD=IMHE. (2000). Research management at the institutional level. Expert meeting, Paris, June 8–9, 2000. Scott, P. (2000). Higher education in Central and Eastern Europe: An analytical report. In: Ten years after and looking ahead: A review of the transformations of higher education in Central and Eastern Europe, UNESCO CEPES, 2000, Bucharest. Statistical Yearbook of Latvia (2000). Statistical Yearbook of Estonia (2000). Statistical Yearbook of Russia (1999). Statistical Yearbook of Lithuania (2000). Statistical Yearbook of Romania (1999). Statistical Yearbook of Slovakia (2000). UNESCO. (1998a). Higher education in the twenty-,rst century. Vision and action. World Conference on Higher Education, Paris, 5 –9 October, 1998, Working document. UNESCO. (1998b). World Science Report, 1998, Paris. UNESCO CEPES. (2000). Ten years after and looking ahead: A review of the transformations of higher education in Central and Eastern Europe, UNESCO CEPES, 2000, Bucharest. UNESCO Yearbook (1999).
Further reading Grzhibovska, A. Latvia: The University of Latvia. Marga, A. Romania: Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. Popa, G. Romania: The Alexaudru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi. Statistical Yearbook of Bulgaria (1999). Stern, J. Slovakia: The University of Economics in Bratislava. World Development Indicators (2000).
