Recently, European post-communist countries have tried to introduce reforms leading to (re-)establishing the government control over higher education institutions (HEIs) allowing governments to respond to the economic crisis. The difference between these attempts and those of their Western counterparts is that in the former these reforms are influenced by the developments that took place right after the fall of communism, when the governments had no capacity to design higher education (HE) policies. Thus, the definition of the relationship between HEIs and the government was mostly left to academics. Academics introduced relatively high-level of institutional autonomy insulating the HEIs from government and society. The larger the autonomy defined in the 1990s, the more difficult it was to later argue for the introduction of the control over the HEIs. Further, the early definition of the relationship between the state and the HEI stipulated more or less limited role of government in defining HE policy, and provided the academics with veto powers in HE policymaking process. Both these early transition effects contributed to the complexity and disintegration of the national system.
After the year 2000, the HE systems in the post-communist countries faced new situation. The governments formulated their agenda with the view of changing the HEIs autonomy. The European structures became active in promoting changes in HE autonomy. However, the existing legacies constrained both the government reform attempts and the influence of European structures.
In the paper I will discuss the impact of the different paths taken by Slovakia, Lithuania and Romania during early transition on later reform attempts aimed at redefining the relationship between the state and the HEIs, particularly, the institutional autonomy. I also analyze how these post-transition arrangements affect the influence of the European-level structures on the university autonomy reforms, and how these three countries adapt to these structures.
