Student Corner - University Autonomy: Utopia & Paradox by Olga Bain Volume 3, Issue 1 - Fall 1999 An autonomous university projects both the dream of utopia and the reality of multiple paradoxes as some universities are aspiring to become more independent from outside control in their internal operations. But both driving forces are in place. And "the place", or "space" for practicing authority in education is multi-dimensional. The changing relationships between governments and universities are reported to point to converging tendencies of more market-like effects on the higher education enterprise worldwide. As universities tend to be initially positioned in "opposite comers" of the authority space, how comparable are country-specific trajectories, and how informative are their experiences to each other? And if so, is the learning one-way ("we’ve already been there") or mutual ("how does others’ experience illuminate our own?")? Probably the greatest expectations from the loosening of state control and increasing university-based decision-making were entertained in the countries of the former Eastern block, were centralized state self-imposed on academics in the past and rewarded their service to the public good, as the state defined it, with relatively high status and compensation. With the focus on the Russian universities, the major issues of the state-market interaction are highlighted below. They pinpoint trouble zones of universities both aspiring to be more autonomous and seemingly enjoying considerable independence in various national settings. With the state support diminishing, the exodus of the promising faculty from the costly sciences has continued, and universities face the problem of aging faculty and the lack of "new blood". Yet those programs "in demand" became vitally important in bringing additional, nongovernmental revenue not only in public but in new private schools. Lack of legal delineation and assurance of non-profit status for non-state (private) schools has caused confusion and miscommunication. The reputation of the new private sector has been questioned by rectors of public universities, especially after the government set up a cap for the latter in admitting fee-bring students. After the quota was lifted, public universities increased their tuition-charged admissions at a much higher rate than private schools. With these worrisome impacts of market-like forces on Russian universities, the ever-desperate need for revenue combined with the forced decentralization in general education, policy-making in higher education becomes charged politically. And so the legal ambivalence as to charging tuition-fees on all the students remains unresolved, sources of the needed revenue unidentified, students barred from higher education by their families’ income level, and institutions facing these problems on their own. Return to the International and Comparative Studies in Education Homepage |
