PRIVATISATION AND ORGANISATIONAL EVOLUTION IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Ana-Maria Dima
CHEPS Summer School, July 2003 , Maribor, Slovenia

1. Introduction

The emergence of private higher education in Central and Eastern Europe represented one of the most spectacular changes in the educational systems of the post-communist countries. These institutions came into being in the absence of a specific legal framework. After almost twelve years from its occurrence, the private sector reached almost 30% of the total level of student enrolments in countries like Romania, Poland or Estonia. The number of private education institutions surpasses in many countries the number of the public ones. Dominating the institutional landscape in some cases, private institutions represent 81,9% of the total population of higher education institutions in Slovenia, 62,9% in Poland, 60% in Estonia, 59,3% in Romania, 51,6% in Hungary and 50% in Moldova (see Appendix 1). These figures should be cautiously interpreted, as information about the proportion of institutions in the private sector should be always correlated with the number of students they comprise in the overall system, in order to avoid paradoxes as the case of Slovenia, for instance, where 81,9% of the institutions train 4,3% of the total number of students.

This trend is present not only in Central and South East Europe. Altbach (1999:1) stated that private higher education is one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing segments of postsecondary education at the turn of the 21 st century. Examining comparative perspective on private education he confirmed that private institutions, with a long history in many countries, are expanding in scope and numbers, and are increasingly important in parts of the world that have relied on the public sector. A related phenomenon mentioned by Altbach (1999:1) is the “privatisation” of public institutions in some countries. Considering tuition fees and other charges rising, he noticed that “public and private institutions look more and more similar”.

Some private institutions managed to pass quality thresholds and entered as viable actors on the (quasi)market of higher education that emerged in such countries. New legal and academic frameworks in terms of legislation and institutional bodies for accreditation and quality evaluation have been set up in all these countries in order to draw the boundaries of a functional higher education system. Both public and private universities were obliged to adapt to the new legislation in order to survive, gain legitimacy and attract new students.

In the first phase, private higher education institutions seemed to be very much market oriented, offering a wide range of programmes required by the developments corresponding to the transition to a market economy. In the meantime, the traditional public universities developed also strategies for responding to the new societal challenges. It seems that the boundaries between public and private sectors have steadily become blurred. For instance, some public like private, and private relying on public staffing resources, universities decided to diversify their financial sources by introducing tuition fees and offering consultancy services or to look for private donors in order to support their educational or research programmes.

Moreover, in addition to the national providers of higher education, new transnational private providers of higher education have started to deliver their programmes. Besides possible blurring boundaries between public and private, the emergence of transnational higher education has increased the complexity, or as Altbach (1999: 13) has characterised it “a growing trend toward the multinationalization of private higher education, further blurring distinctions as well as national boundaries”. This trend implies that private interests in one country, usually developing or middle-income countries, are linking up with universities, public or private, in the industrialised nations.

There are different ways in which transnational higher education became visible in South-East Europe: more and more new organisational arrangements in the higher education private sector like partnerships, offshore institutions or distance education became familiar labels for the South-Eastern higher education area.

Despite all these ‘blurring' developments, the public opinion still express the view that public higher education is more rigorous than private higher education in terms of the selection of incoming students. Employers in general make a qualitative distinction among the two categories of graduates, despite the efforts of certain governments that the quality of diplomas issued by the two sectors of education should be guaranteed by credible procedures.

As C. Campbell and C. Rosznyai (2002) put forward, the expansion in the number of private higher education institutions and consequently the concern for the quality of education provision were factors in introducing quality assessment, and specifically accreditation, at the system level in most Central and Eastern European countries (Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine).

In sum, privatization is an important phenomenon in higher education. There is a growth in the number of private institutions in many countries; some boundaries between public and private are blurring whereas other seem to remain. There are nevertheless numerous intriguing questions relating to privatisation. Examples are:

•  How precisely did private institutions emerge in specific countries?

•  How public universities did respond to privatisation?

•  How private institutions gained legitimacy?

Our main purpose could be resumed as to offering a comparative evolutionary perspective on the factors leading to the proliferation, variation, selection, and retention of private higher education institutions in different countries. In order to capture the meanings of the problem statement, the central research question guiding the overall analysis is:

What are the organisational dynamics of privatisation in different higher education systems?

In our search for an answer to the general problem statement we choose the strategy of operationalizing the main research questions into several research problems that make the object of the following section.

Analysing organisational dynamics implies the use of a combination of a comparative and longitudinal approaches (across a restricted number of systems) to investigate aspects of privatisation in populations of organisations or organisational fields through time. The use of terms ‘populations' and ‘organisational field' signifies an option for applying a theoretical approach rooted in population ecology/evolutionary approaches (Hannan and Freeman, 1989, Aldrich 1999, Carroll and Hannan, 2000) and institutional sociology.

Privatization traditionally means transfer of control or ownership from the state or public sector to the private enterprises. This definition can be applied to the higher education sector privatization only in a very limited extent. For this reason, usually, connotations or secondary meanings of the term are used in relation to the emergence of fully private higher education institutions or ‘like for profit' behaviors. The connotations or secondary meanings of privatisation in higher education relates to higher education institutions setting up private companies; to structural co-operation with private partners; to outsourcing research, teaching or support services, etc. Defining what privatization means in the higher education field, arise as a first conceptual research question:

1. What are the meanings of privatization in higher education?

We are interested in exploring the meanings of privatization as it appears overtly in higher education literature, but also to dive in its hidden manifestations at the level of subdivisions of other topics like non-official higher education or transnational education.

The developments in the field of higher education policy literature and the sub inclusion of private higher education institutions under the umbrella of organisational theory field leads to a interrelated definition of concepts and approaches between the two strands of literature. At this point, mapping the theoretical landscape within the two strands of literature represents the preliminary step for a cross-fertilisation framework. The construction of this framework follows from the second research question:

2. What concepts, theories and methods are best suited in the construction of an evolutionary approach of the privatisation process in higher education?

Evolutionary theory has an eclectic nature involving the simultaneous use of various approaches. Aldrich (1999) reviews six approaches in relation to evolutionary theories: population ecology, institutional theory, the interpretive approach, organisational learning theory, resource dependence and transaction cost economics.

Organizational ecology and institutional theory have proved to be useful in analysing higher education (Hannan and Freeman, 1989, Huisman 1995, Enders, 2001). Also, considering previous experience of applying the neo-institutionalist framework to the emergence of private higher education in Romania (Dima, 1998, 2002), we decided to limit the number of theoretical approaches borrowed from organisational theory to two of them: population ecology and institutional theory. These two perspectives will be considered under the evolutionary framework.

Previous studies (e.g. Darvas, 1996: 33) indicate that the socio-political environment is critical for innovators-providing stimuli, competition, and sources of support as well as constraints. Institutional leaders argued that these factors were important in their decisions to establish new programmes and/or institutions, either in response to stimuli in the external environment or for the shortcomings that they experienced within their own academic systems. Applying this characteristic to the private higher education phenomena, a third research question emerges:

3. Which are the economic, political and social conditions that shape the emergence and development of the private higher education institutions?

Studies of emerging organizations show that most of them grow opportunistically, rather than by following a pre-set plan (Aldrich, 1999: 119). The development of private higher education in Central and Eastern Europe seems to confirm this: it took place at a chaotic rate and the institutional diversification was bewildering. Legislative measures to regulate this chaos have been recently enforced, but dealing with private higher education in an organised manner still remains a problem at the educational system level. The issues of quality assurance in private higher education and accreditation practices came at the forefront triggered by the initial tendency of some private higher education institutions of granting diplomas that were not recognised by the national authorities.

4. Theoretical Framework

The evolutionary approach developed by Howard E. Aldrich (1999) has the advantage of being applicable at multiple levels covering the processes of variation, selection, retention and struggle that jointly produce patterned change in evolving systems. According to Aldrich, a diversity of approaches to organisational studies is not only tolerable but also necessary. In this respect, institutional theory (Scott, 1995), the interpretative approach (Meyer and Rowan, 1991), organisational learning theory, population ecology (Hannan and Freeman, 1989), resource dependence (Pfeffer, 1987), and transaction cost economics (North, 1981) are equally embedded in the evolutionary approach.

Evolutionary theory explains how particular forms of organisations come to exist in specific kinds of environments focusing on four generic processes: variation, selection, retention and struggle. Resuming their main characteristics, the literature reviewed for the purposes of this research indicate that evolutionary models are not causal, in the sense that they do not specify the engines driving variation, selection and retention. Instead, the methods are algorithmic, specifying that if certain conditions are met, then a particular outcome will occur. (Aldrich, 1999: 42).

Considering the particularities of the field of higher education policy and previous experience of applying the neo-institutionalist framework in a study on the emergence of private higher education institutions in Romania , the solution envisaged for including the privatization process under the evolutionary theoretical framework was to restrain the number of theoretical approaches borrowed from organisational theory to population ecology and institutional theory. These two perspectives will be considered not as separate theoretical entities, but as interrelated perspectives under the evolutionary umbrella.

Including private higher education institutions in the above framework we are aware that there are some critics to be avoided, with regard to the idea that these institutions do not necessarily represent more evolved organizational forms in terms of progress and quality of educational services. Put it more precisely, private institutions represents a different organizational form differentiated from traditional universities as a result of dependency on a historical and societal path in organizational development that leaded not necessarily to a visible progress in the quality of teaching, learning or research processes.

Motto: “Education is the property of no one. It belongs to the people as a whole. And if education is not given to the people, they will have to take it”- Che Guevara

There is not an easy attempt to define a concept like privatization in the field of higher education, as its operational forms appears sometimes overtly in the literature as ‘private higher education sector' or ‘non-pubic sector', other times it is hidden as a subdivision of the ‘non-official higher education', as a dimension and unit of academic horizontal differentiation among sectors, or like a part of the ‘transnational education'. Seen as a policy or as a process, privatisation in higher education is a term used broadly. For this reason, the purpose of this section is to investigate and clearly separate the main meanings and the connotations of the concept of privatization.

In terms of methodology requirements, it is crucial to have a comprehensive definition of privatization in order to avoid further key problems as bias or inefficiency. The reliability and validity of our research should be assured by including the optimal number of variables and directions for their measurement. As King, Keohane & Verba (1994:152) noticed: “How are we to know what counts as consequential if the term is not precisely defined?” For this reason, further measurement errors should be anticipated by the amount of information we bring to bear on a problem. This information is considered “more important than the raw number of observations we have” (King, Keohane & Verba, 1994:159).

The most common definition of privatisation presents this process under the economic perspective as signifying the transfer of ownership or control from the state to the private enterprises or to the private sector (Webster, 2001). Unfortunately, this definition is hardly operational in the field of higher education, where it received new meanings and additional connotations describes as follows, although in isolated cases, like Sweden, the intention to transfer ownership or control of public higher education institutions to the private sector is almost materialized in practice (J.Currie &al., 2003)

The traditional pattern of privatisation in higher education relates to the emergence of new (fully) private higher education institutions. This meaning is prevalent for higher education systems in United States, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, but to a much lesser extent in Western Europe, where the nation-state has dominated higher education systems for a long time. The entrance in the modernity era brought more differentiation and diversification in the institutional landscape, as an expression of the more individualistic values of the new ‘Risk society' (Beck, 1992). The public sector values visible in ‘trusted and autonomous professionalism, rational hierarchy, social justice, and public service' were challenged by the ‘private consumer interests, individualism, and entrepreneurial innovation', as private values for the twenty century. (J.Currie, R.de Angelis, H. de Boeur, J.Huisman, C.Lacotte, 2003)

The integration of privatization in the larger economic perspective of ‘marketization' in higher education is beyond the purposes of this study. The theoretical framework of this study is placed in the sociology of organizations, more precisely in the evolutionary perspective, and references to the economic perspectives are only tangential, remaining out of the main focus area, as possible future developments.

Scott (2000: 14) states that privatization of the late twentieth century was seen at first merely as a managed retreat from the welfare state, although later it received also the label of ‘individualization'. It implied also a more profound cultural change that was foreseen to lead in the twenty-first century to a much more radical process of de-institutionalization. In Scott's vision, diversification of higher education systems, privatization, new communications and information technologies are new conditions that may undermine traditional institutions, producing radical changes, both as a material and symbolic institution.

The shift from public to private is not a constant, one-way direction in terms of public policy. However, there are four constant dimensions identified on a continuum of movement from public to private forms of policy identified in the literature (Feigenbaum, Henig, and Hammet 1999, 10):

Table 1: Dimensions of Movement from Public to Private Forms of Policy:

Source: Feigenbaum, Hening, and Hamnet, 1999, p.10

The discussion on the specific characteristics of privatisation in higher education on each of the four dimensions presented in Table 1 will form the object of a separate analysis revealing commonalities and dissimilarities among different countries.

Considered separately, as an autonomous sector or as part of other semantically kinship umbrella meanings, private higher education manifestations should be explored in all possible forms of manifestations, like for instance ‘non-official higher education' and ‘transnational education'.

Non-official higher education was defined as referring to “higher education activities operating parallel to and outside the official higher education system. This sector may offer higher education leading directly or indirectly to certification which may not be recognised by the state in which it is produced. Such education may be provided by: indigenous private institutions; by foreign, public and private institutions, by the transfer credit system, by non-state supervised open-distance learning, and/or courses provided through electronic technology such as the INTERNET.” ( Tsaoussis, 1999: 19)

Provided by non-profit or for-profit institutions, consortiums or other organizational arrangements in most of the cases under private ownership, transnational education is defined as “all types of higher education study programmes, or sets of courses of study, or educational services in which the learners are located in a country different from the one where the institution providing or sponsoring the services is based. Such programmes may belong to the education system of a state different from the state in which it operates, or may operate independently of any national education system” (Code of Good Practice, 2001).

The continuum from public to private mentioned in Table 1 is questionable when thinking to include under sector's analysis the transnational providers of higher education. The question in this case is under which sector should private transnational education be included? A possible answer can be configured using Levy's (1986) typology of public/private mixes in higher education systems.

Figure 1. Typology of /private mixes in higher education systems

Source: Reprinted from Levy (1986)

The five dimensions distributed along the single and dual sectors are defined across the ‘main source of founding', ‘existence of tuition fees', ‘share of public or private' within the entire system in terms of students enrolments or type of funds. Describing Levy's typology, Salerno (2001:5) schematized the five dimensions as follows:

•  Statist case:
•  might alternatively be called the ‘pure-public' case. Levy employs the 90% rule: at least 90% public enrolments and 90% state financing;
•  a high degree of ministerial oversight and little institutional autonomy in terms of internally allocating funds;
•  there are usually no tuition fees;
•  often found in the lesser-developed nations in Africa and Latin America as well as in Western Europe.

•  Public-Autonomous:
•  it focuses on single-sector systems that are largely publicly founded;
•  historically greater reliance on private sources of financing to supplement state appropriations;
•  both tuition revenues and philanthropic contributions here are important sources of income;
•  institutions tend to have greater flexibility to internally allocate financial resources;
•  appropriations are more likely to come in the form of block grants rather than line-item appropriations ;
•  institutions themselves are often separated from direct government control by buffer organizations, such as the higher education funding councils in the United Kingdom;
•  policy debates tend to focus on the roles of intermediary organizations, like HECFE in England, and the imposition of higher tuition fees.

•  The Homogenized pattern:
•  represents the most balanced system both in terms of both finance and form of control;
•  Levy suggest that is the least common form employed;
•  here clearly are public and private higher education institutions, though privates are likely to be more similar than different to publics;
•  governments perceptions prevail that privates perform useful functions –‘the primary driver for public financial support'(Salerno, 2001);

•  The Minority Private:
•  a distinctly dual system is in operation;
•  private IHEs may represent anywhere between 10% to 50% enrolments;
•  private IHEs are largely financed by non-government funding;
•  new privates tend to draw all of their income from private sources, particularly tuition;
•  ‘elitte' institutions tend to rely, in relative terms, more on other private sources;
•  the public sector is the dominant higher education provider and is supported mainly through state appropriations;
•  tuition in publics is still regarded to be relatively low;
•  this appears to be the dominant pattern across much of Latin America.

•  The Majority Private pattern:
•  might be referred as the ‘pure private model';
•  with the exception that private IHEs enroll the majority of students, in many respects this pattern is similar to the Minority Private;
•  privates are more apt to receive public funding relative to the previous pattern;
•  countries in the Pacific Rim region have been apt to take this approach, particularly in Japan, South Corea, and the Philippines though instances exist in other parts of the world like Brazil.

When trying to include transnational IHEs in one of the five categories from Levy's typology, a question arises immediately: is transnational higher education a subcategory of the distinctive ‘Majority Private' pattern, or it is a third sector in itself? Because the typology was designed to describe “only how sectors are financed”(Levy, 198), the answer to the first part of our question is clear: transnational private higher education institutions are part of the Dual sector, included in the ‘Majority Private' pattern, but in terms of institutional form of control or ownerhip, which are issues connected to the governance topic, the possibility that transnational higher education could be a third sector, beyond public and private sectors is to be explored.

Privatisation of public higher education is regarded as controversial and treated with caution by many governments all over the world. Pro and cons opinions about introducing private values in the public higher education sector always met contestations despite, sometimes the evidence that from the managerial and economic surveillance points of view this was and remains for many universities and many governments the best possible solution. This observation is sustained by recent studies analysing privatisation, competition and entrepreneurialism (J.Currie, R.de Angelis, H. de Boer, J.Huisman, C.Lacotte, 2003:74), concluding that “the privatising challenge facing universities is apparent”. Case studies undertaken in this analysis in Western Europe revealed that:

“In the European universities, the traditional values and practices are even stronger. None has introduced full fees for students, sold public assets for public enterprise, or allowed public institutions to come under total ministerial control. In addition, formula funding for teaching and some research predominates rather than competitive market bidding, and performance indicators are rarely or unsystematically introduced.”

Confronted with spontaneous advancing competition and more or less entrepreneurial practices, some governments from South-East Europe did not hesitate to introduce full fees for all type of students in the public sector, like Romania (Dima, 1998), or only for part-time students in Poland, Slovenia, Hungary. These countries were confronted with a somehow reversed pattern in terms of public policies established in higher education after the falling of communist regimes, experimenting the infusion of private values in all sectors of these societies in sometimes dramatic, but nevertheless original ways. The transition from social and cultural patterns relied in a planned, communist economy to the open market values penetrated all spheres bringing on the political scene new powerful actors with new visions about social development and new interests in promoting certain imported social change models (usually from Western Europe) or developing own models for social change.

A different context for defining privatisation is offered by the joint couple of differentiation and diversity (J. Huisman, 1995) semantic conceptual area. In this respect, the terms differentiation and diversity refer to establishing or maintaining differences between entities- institutions, programs, sectors-of the higher education system.

Differentiation in higher education was defined as ‘a process in which different structures or functions develop from a formerly integrated whole', denoting a dynamic process, while diversity refers to a static situation referring to the variety of types of entities (higher education institutions, study programmes, disciplinary cultures) within a certain system (the higher education system, a sector of the system, a university) (J. Huisman, 1995: 18, 22).

In this framework, privatization can be seen as a process leading to academic horizontal differentiation between institutions on the dimension of sectors (private versus public).

Seen as a result of the systemic differentiation, the occurrence of the private higher education sector can be treated as a symbol of the flexibility and viability of the system as a whole. Systemic diversity relates to the differences between institutional type (for instance, research universities versus vocational institutions), size and control (for instance private versus public) (J. Huisman, 1995: 2).

This systematization of the privatization meanings on the axes of differentiation and diversification may be particularly useful in the later comparative analyses between country systems, institutions, programmes and academic cultures.

From the legislative point of view, an operational definition of privatisation can be constructed using the modes of operation allowed for the private institutions. This is another issue at stake for a comprehensive definition of privatisation in higher education.

In most of the countries where the private sector is present, private higher education institutions can operate as ‘non-profit' or ‘for-profit' institutions. As the 2002 World Bank Report on the new challenges for tertiary education reveals, not all private institutions operate under the same regulations. While many private tertiary institutions are profit-making corporations subject to pure market mechanisms and corporate tax laws, many other are non-profit institutions operating in countries where the laws permit the registration of corporations with special status. Non-profit institutions differ from for-profit institutions in that they operate under a special financial requirement (a “nondistribution constraint”) forbidding them to distribute surplus revenue or profits to shareholders or individuals. Any such funds must be retained within the institution for capital investment, future operating expenses or endowments. (World Bank Report: 59, 60).

At the level of institutional behaviours translated in the image of ‘like for profit enterprise' the connotations or secondary meanings of privatisation in higher education relates to higher education institutions setting up private companies; to structural co-operation with private partners; to outsourcing research, teaching or support services, etc.

Summarizing the above reflections of what privatisation means as a term considered separately or as a ‘sub-term' of a broader sub-dimension in the higher education literature, the resulting features were concretised in Table 1 on the following dimensions: economic, higher education, legislation and institutional behaviors:

Defining what ‘privatization' means over different national systems is of particular importance for our research, as a problematic aspect that should be taken into consideration in all comparative studies is the problem of equivalence. Defined as “the problem whether ‘something' compared in different countries or systems is in fact the same in its significance” (Goedegebuure & Van Vught, 1997: 11), the problem of equivalence was considered in the methodological literature of comparative studies as having probably no perfect solution, but still remains one of the most important aspects to be taken into consideration.

Conclusion

In order to facilitate the construction of clear categories for analysis under the empirical phase of our research, the purpose of this section was to provide a definition of ‘privatization' that could be applied in a consistent and unitary way for each of the case studies that will represent the main source of information in our empirical approach. Also, this definition is very useful in the selection of the same units for analysis for the case studies (e.g. type of private institutions, organizational behaviours, institutional arrangements, particularities of students and teaching staff, etc.).

Guidelines for a comparative study:

The design of this research proposal was conceived as for a comparative study of the development of private higher education in different national systems under the theoretical framework of evolutionary perspective from the sociology of organizations.

According to L. Goedegebuure and Frans van Vught (1994: 27), the literature on comparative analysis offers no agreement on what the characteristics of these more specific studies should be. Moreover, “clarity of design and methodology still do not dominate the writings in comparative higher education studies.”

Comparative studies are defined as studies using comparable data from at least two societies (Armer 1973:49) or as a form of multilevel research (implying comparative analysis both within and across systems) (Przeworski and Teune, 1970:50-51). Following Ragin, L. Goedegebuure and Frans van Vught states that neither a data category, nor a multilevel approach should be used to define comparative studies, simply because these definitions are too restrictive. ‘What distinguishes comparative social science is the use of attributes of macrosocial units in explanatory statements'. (Ragin, 1987:5).

In an ideal type of comparative analysis, ‘a truly causal comparative study would have to begin with the specification of hypotheses to be tested (and for this a theory from which the hypotheses can be deduced is indispensable). The next step would be an overview of possible competing explanations, which would be followed by a clear specification of the cases and of the variables to be analysed in these cases' (L. Geodegebuure & Frans van Vught, 1994: 19).

Main methods and instruments of research for a multi-level analysis:

A common structure containing dimensions of analysis, relevant variables and indicators necessary for the construction of the country profiles will be designed and applied for each country included under analysis. Countries to be included under analysis will be selected according to the requirements of the theoretical framework and the assumptions included in our hypotheses.

Under the conditions of having no control over the events that frame the real-life context of privatization in higher education, we choose the case studies as the main method of research.

As the review of the higher education literature proved that good comparable data is still scarce, the case studies expected outcomes are: one the one hand, data gathering for the countries included in our analysis, and a contribution to the development of our theoretical framework, on the other hand.

In terms of quantitative research, for a better illustration of the organisational community patterns and ecological behaviour of the private higher education institutions, the cluster analysis would present the advantage of grouping the countries and the institutions included in the research sample in separate groups according to the distances between their profiles. The distances measures revealing commonalties and dissimilarities between countries profiles will be the basis for further international comparisons.

In terms of qualitative design, the nutshell of the case studies will rely on the tension between the new structures and the need for new organisational academic cultures adapted to the requirements of both national systems and internationalization trends in both public and private sectors of higher education.

The construction of a multi-level model of analysis will also require the application of a content analysis of the legislative systems of the countries included, as at the formal level legislation seems to reproduce and regulate the main issues at stake in the higher education systems.

The content analysis of the legislative systems will be part of the qualitative design of the case studies presenting the peculiarities of private sector of higher education in each country included in our study.

Data about the dimensions of the private higher education sectors in the envisaged countries will be gathered by questionnaires and by Internet searching. In fact, I will take the advantage of making use of the sources I have already established while working for UNESCO-CEPES statistical data gathering.

Data for both cluster analysis and case studies will be gathered mainly by questionnaires and interviews connected to site visits. Quality assurance agencies; higher education ministries and national commissions for statistics along with the ENIC/NARIC network representatives of the countries included in the research sample will be envisaged.

Also, for the transnational level of analysis, the UNESCO-CEPES Database on Transnational Education Providers that is currently under development will offer an additional source for quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Secondary data analysis on the data provided by international studies and surveys on private higher education will provide information of interest for the purposes of this research proposal.

The results of this research proposal could be of interest for policy makers in the field of higher education as well as for the researchers in the field of organisational theory.

Quality assurance mechanisms are challenged not only by the traditional national providers of private higher education institutions. More and more the new transnational arrangements like ‘branch campuses', ‘twinning arrangements', ‘distance education' and ‘franchising' are becoming institutionalised in all countries. Institutional diversity requires new rules and procedures embedded in new policies.

In Central and Eastern Europe the private sector of higher education already reached its ‘adolescence age' and the forecasts concerning its behaviour depends on the indications already gathered in its ‘childhood' adaptation and modelling of its complex environment.

Employers in general make a qualitative distinction among the two categories of graduates, despite the efforts of certain governments that the quality of diplomas issued by the two sectors of education should be guaranteed by credible procedures.

The organizational dynamics of privatization in different higher education systems represents a challenging topic for research. Particularly important is this issue in Central and Eastern Europe where political, economic and cultural environment of higher education systems required reformative and innovative response in the internal set of organizational resources both at the levels of strategies and structures.

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Appendix 1

Statistical Information on Higher Education in Central and Eastern Europe

In the context of its activities for the dissemination of information, UNESCO-CEPES is publishing basic statistical information on higher education in Central and Eastern Europe covering the post-1998 period. An effort is being made to present data that is as recent as possible. Therefore, what we publish is data provided to us directly by our partners in the respective countries. The information presented provides data for the respective academic year in the following areas:

•  Number of institutions (public and private) and teaching staff (in public and private institutions);
•  Student enrolments (public and private);
•  Number of students per 100,000 inhabitants;
•  Student/teaching staff ratio.

Table 1: Number of students, teaching staff and population (academic year 2000-2001)

*For Poland, the number of teaching staff indicates only full-time employees (in addition, there are 5235 part-time and 15452 short-term contract employees). For the case of multiple employment, a particular member of academic staff is counted twice, three times, depending on the number of institutions in which he/she is formally employed

… Data not available

Table 2. Number of institutions (2000-2001 academic year)

Data Sources:

The Development of Education - National report of the Republic of Belarus, Ministry of Education, Minsk, 2001.
Data provided by National Institute for Education , Sofia: Centre for Higher Education Research , 2001.
Data provided by Estonian Academic Recognition Information Centre, Tallinn, 2001.
Higher Education in the Czech Republic, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Prague: Centre for Higher Education Studies, 2001.
Data provided by Central Institute of Statistics, Ministry of Educational, Hungary, 2001
Education Institutions in Latvia at the Beginning of School Year 1999/2000 , Riga: Central Statistical Bureau, 2000.
Data provided by Ministry of Education and Science, Riga, 2001.
Data provided by the Ministry of Education of Moldova Republic, Chisinau, 2001. Higher Schools and Their Finances in 2000, Central Statistical Office, Warszawa 2001.
Romanian Statistical Yearbook , National Institute for Statistics, Bucharest, 2000.
Handbook Russia 2001 , State Committee of the Russian Federation on Statistics, Moscow, 2001.
Data provided by Higher Education and Recognition Practices – Slovakia. Bratislava: Institute of Information and Prognoses of Education, 2001

Internet data sources:

http://www.org.uva.nl/eair/porto/papers/Hagelund%20Poster.pdf
http://www.org.uva.nl/eair/porto/papers/Hagelund%20Poster.pdf
http://www.sigov.si/vrs/ang/slovenia/education.html
http://www.education.gov.ua:8800/edu/
http://www.education.gov.ua:8800/edu/docs/common/higher_educ_eng.html
http://www.std.lt/STATISTIKA/Gyventojai/Liet_gyventojai_e.htm
http://dsbb.imf.org/country.htm
http://www.prb.org/template.cmf?template=InterestDisplay.cmf&InterestCategoryID=215

Source: www.cepes.ro

See Dima, A.-M. (1998), Romanian Private Higher Education Viewed from a Neo-institutionalist Perspective , in Higher Education in Europe , Vol.3.

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