Reform of Higher Education Governance Structures in Poland

Overview & Synopsis

The implementation of a new higher education policy started in Poland in 2020. The new policy seeks to internationalise and transform universities to increase their competitiveness. This article describes the historical context, issues and reasoning behind the reform as well as some of the challenges for the future development of higher education governance structures in Poland. Current efforts to implement the new policy at leading universities in Poland are described as examples of the changing higher education governance landscape in Poland. Despite an ideological shift and change of the political system in 1989 in Poland, higher education governance has been slow to change. Polish scientists have called for higher education reforms to address a host of problems: a mismatch of the structure of the higher education system to social and economic challenges; universities suffer from limited financial autonomy; the quality of higher education is not sufficient; barriers for researchers to pursue excellence that have been identified need to be addressed. In 2016 the Polish government started a process of dialogue with the academic world in Poland, creating the foundations for the new, revolutionary bill of higher education, the "Constitution for Science." The new policy of the Polish government bases, in theory, the transformation of universities on their internationalisation to make Polish science an equal partner for leading higher education centres in the world. The example of changes in Polish higher education serves a comparative reference for the development of higher education governance in Europe.