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From the 20th SVU World Congress:

Petr Jehlicka -
Brain Gain: Sustaining Social Scientists in Post-Communist Countries. Central European, Balkan and Baltic Experience

INTRODUCTION

This report covers three 'subregions' of Eastern Europe, namely Central Europe (Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary), the Balkans (Romania and Bulgaria) and the Baltic countries (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia), which will be, as a whole, henceforth referred to as the 'Region'.

Another terminological issue that needs to be clarified at the beginning is the meaning of the term 'social sciences'. The term in the broadest sense covers a diverse range of disciplines from 'more applied' disciplines such as business and management, law and social policy, to more academic disciplines such as sociology, political science, economics, international relations, and social geography. However, as most information in this report was collected from or by people connected in one way or another with Civic Education Project (CEP), the definition of social science will be broadened to cover all disciplines taught by CEP lecturers. A sizeable proportion of CEP lecturers works in humanities including political philosophy, history, linguistics, and the like. Hence the spectrum of disciplines covered in this report is broader than what is usually meant by social sciences.

The goal of this report is to present an up-to-date overview of the situation that faces young social scientists working in the Region's higher education systems. Without claiming to be a comprehensive analysis of social science problems in the Region, which is impossible due to a lack of any systematic assessment of this branch of academia, it nevertheless does provide a deep insight into several areas critical for the success of the reform of social sciences. The report first addresses selected major general trends in the Region's academia which have a strong bearing on professional development of young social scientists. Most of these issues are common to all countries covered in this report. However, as a consequence of largely unsystematic efforts to reform higher education, specific problems affecting social science's development emerged in several countries. Some of them are presented in the next part of the report. These two sections, based primarily on secondary sources of information, provide a background for conclusions derived from two 1999 surveys targeting CEP lecturers in selected countries of the Region. The last part before the Conclusion describes several examples of solutions to some of the problems identified in the previous sections of the report.

1 GENERAL TRENDS IN HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR ACROSS THE REGION

The development of social sciences is part of a process of 'triple' transition in the Region's academia. While the academic sphere as a whole, at least until recently, has been on the periphery of governments' interests in almost all countries of the Region, social sciences, with the exception of law and business studies, have had even more marginal standing. That makes a reform of this branch of academia a highly challenging task, as any attempt in this direction meets with deeply rooted indifference to most social science disciplines.

1.1 'Triple' Transition of Higher Education Sector in the Region

Hrubos (1999) argues that the 1990s saw dramatic changes in the Hungarian higher education sector and she compares these changes to processes that occurred in more developed countries several decades earlier. In the 1960s and 1970s, during the period of unprecedented economic growth, western developed societies experienced the expansion of higher education under the slogan of openness and democratisation. The recession of the 1980s raised questions of efficiency and competition while the 1990s' main issue was the maintenance of quality under mass education circumstances. In Hungary, as well as in the rest of the Region alike, all these changes that can be conveniently described as a 'triple' transition, occurred in one decade and what is more, under conditions of economic transition. Furthermore, apart from these 'macro level' changes related to the expansion of student numbers and changes in structure of students by disciplines, the content of education of many disciplines underwent far reaching changes too. This was highly relevant to social sciences, and to several disciplines in particular2, as they were most affected by the ideological and political constraints of the past. At the same time however, due to the technocratic and scientific educational background of the majority of the highly educated social segment of society, including academic elite, social sciences, and especially disciplines of a less applied character, again became marginalized disciplines.

1.2 Continuing Marginalization of Social Sciences

This time however, marginalization is not necessarily ideologically based as was the case only a decade ago but, due to the low status of these disciplines within academia and also within the decision-making community that controls allocation of resources, it is primarily a financial marginalization. This is definitely the case in the Czech Republic3. According to Peruolis (1999), in Lithuania a debate has recently started about whether natural sciences are being given an unfair advantage over social sciences in terms of funding. Vilnius Technical University apparently received extra funding for the establishment of an Aviation Institute in a country that has a very limited need for pilots.

A commonly employed argument is that research and teaching in social science disciplines can be conducted with 'a pen and paper' and does not require any further equipment, perhaps apart from computing facilities. Unfortunately, this logic is often extended to pay conditions of those who happen to work in these 'low status' disciplines. Obviously, the lower standing of social sciences leading to lower investment in these disciplines might be the case in Western countries too, but as the whole academia in post-communist countries operates on very tight budgets, this tendency usually has more detrimental consequences for social sciences than for other disciplines.

1.3 Expansion of Students Numbers

What all countries under examination in this report have in common is a considerable expansion in the number of students that took place throughout the 1990s. In Hungary for instance, the number of full-time students in higher education increased two-fold between academic years 1990-91 and 1997-98 (Hrubos, 1999). The same development occurred in the Czech Republic (from 89,000 full-time students in 1989 to 177,000 students in 1998), whereas in Romania the number of all students involved in higher education grew from 193,000 in the academic year 1990-91 to 336,000 in 1995-96. This also meant that the ratio of young people in the 18 - 22 age group admitted to institutions of higher education increased from roughly 10 per cent at the turn of the 1990s to 20 per cent 10 years later. This development started to close the gap between western societies and countries of the Region in terms of the proportion of young people attending universities and similar educational establishments.

However, as far as social sciences and humanities are concerned, the upward trend was even more pronounced. Under the previous regime, the access of students to disciplines such as sociology and psychology was extremely restricted, as they were not seen as essential for the functioning of socialist economies, while other disciplines simply did not exist at all. The consequence of the limited access to social sciences in the past was a great demand for these disciplines once restrictions were lifted. In Romania for example, the number of students taking programmes in social and humanist sciences quadrupled between 1990/91 and 1995/96 (Horobet and Chiritoiu, 1999) and in the Czech Republic the proportion of students studying humanities and social sciences increased from 2.5 per cent in 1989 to 11.6 per cent in 1997.

1.4 The Vicious Circle: More Students, Fewer Scholars and Funds

The soaring numbers of students over the last decade were not accompanied by the same increase in the number of teachers and in the size of funding for higher education. In some cases the number of teachers and the size of funding even shrank (as was the case in Romania). The consequence, among others, was a growing workload of those teachers who decided to stay at universities4.Social sciences and humanities are exactly the disciplines in which the impact of these diverging trends was enormous. At the beginning of the student numbers expansion, the base of these disciplines in terms of the number of teachers as well as the resource base was already very limited due to the reasons mentioned earlier. In the following quotation Kamusella succinctly summarises the Polish situation:

When the number of students [in Poland] tripled, premises and facilities of universities did not expand accordingly. Furthermore, the number of tutors actually plummeted, overburdening the rest with increased teaching responsibilities at the cost of doing research. The vicious circle for Polish academia therefore, is that it is increasingly difficult to follow any meaningful academic career when the teaching loads have increased dramatically, research time and funding is reduced, and the low pay means having to supplement one's income with additional non-academic jobs (Kamusella, 1999).

In the Czech Republic, the law stipulates the weekly number of hours that professors, docents (assistant professors/senior lecturers/readers) and lecturers are supposed to teach. While professors are obliged to teach 6 hours a week and docents 8 hours a week, lecturers, the category to which most young social scientists belong, have a duty to teach 18 hours a week (the official weekly teaching workload at secondary schools is 20 hours). While there are faculties where these rules are simply ignored and, using a highly creative techniques, these official requirements are fulfilled only on paper, there are quite a few faculties and universities where this rule is strictly observed. Many young social scientists are clearly facing a situation where they are expected to teach about 15 hours a week (some other activities such as supervision, excursions, and the like apparently count towards the 18 hours quota) and at the same time to do their PhD or research projects. Several young academics working full-time as university teachers and simultaneously trying to complete their PhD told me that they found keeping with the development of their field difficult, let alone being able to do meaningful research.

1.5 Clientelism and Corruption

There is a growing evidence that higher education and academia in the Region as a whole are often failing in one of its most fundamental social functions: to be a sphere in which young people, the future highly educated stratum of society, are exposed to a transparent, accountable system functioning according to basic ethical principles.

Peruolis (1999) ascribes the recent rush to issue honoris causa degrees to leading Lithuanian politicians to the fact that funding comes to the institutions with the right connections. In the hope that they would secure extra funding, Landsbergis, chairman of the Parliament was granted honoris causa by Klaipeda University (which has no tradition as it is only seven years old), Vagnorius, the Prime Minister, was granted the same degree by Vilnius Technical University, and Adamkus, the President of Lithuania received his honoris causa from Kaunas Technological University.

A cosy but potentially very ominous cohabitation of universities and politicians evolved in the Czech Republic. It has become sort of habit that some Czech universities confer degrees on chairmen of parliamentary clubs of ruling political parties, left and right. Several years ago, the chairman of the parliamentary club of the Civic Democratic Party received a PhD from Olomouc University (for a more positive contribution of this university to the development of Czech social sciences see section 4.1.2) for a thesis that was, as the court finding confirmed, plagiarised (the original text was a text that failed to win its original author a bachelor degree). The length of this PhD thesis did not exceed 40 pages, and the only literary sources were newspaper articles. The MP did not hesitate to publish his thesis as a book. Although the court ruled against the plagiarist, he retained his doctorate and subsequently became a banker. The chairman of the degree commission who described the thesis as 'an exceptional contribution to the development of Czech political science' was elected a Senator in the Czech Parliament.

A young social democratic MP and incidentally also a chairman of the social democratic club in the Czech Parliament lower chamber received his Masters degree from Charles University Faculty of Law this year. It turned out that his Masters thesis had 33 pages and was entirely based on official newsletters sent to the Parliament by the Czech National Bank (Nemecek, 1999). The examiner of this thesis described it as "a bit too short, but otherwise of high quality".

It is perhaps no coincidence that it is the Prague Faculty of Law that appeared in the centre of the largest scandal of Czech higher education in the post-1989 period. It turned out this spring [1999] that the entry exam questions were on the market at a flat rate of 50 000 Czech crowns (1470 USD) in the blank form and at 100 000 Czech crowns (2940 USD) with the correct answers. At the time of writing of this report the police investigation into the case has not been finished.

Another problem falling in the category of a lack of transparency at best and clientelism or corruption at worst, was raised by a Polish respondent to one of the two CEP surveys (for more details see section 3). She pointed out the role of good connections if one wants to succeed in a research grant application. She added that these informal connections are even more important at the university level as this money is very short.

1.6 The Paradox of Greater University Autonomy

Several Romanian respondents to the same survey expressed their strong reservations about the transparency of the Romanian university system, including ambiguous recruitment and employment policies and the misuse of the scarce public resources by private interests pursued by those in positions controlling the flow of the finances. One respondent also pointed out the unexpected results of the increased decentralisation of the higher education system and increased autonomy of individual institutions. Unless this decentralisation is accompanied by institutional reform leading to greater transparency, he argued, decentralisation itself creates conditions conducive for various cliques to appropriate resources to pursue their own interests that have nothing to do with the improvement of the quality of teaching and research. Horobet and Chiritoiu (1999) give a similar verdict on the effect of university autonomy in Romania, saying that the main legal innovation (of the 1990s), university autonomy, did not bring the expected improvements. This problem will almost certainly be of wider significance, as Peruolis (1999) similarly argues that in Lithuania more academic autonomy in respect to curriculum, degree requirements and admission standards does not necessarily produce the desired results because passive majorities block reforms. In Peruolis's view the old guard usually does not plot obstacles to oppose the reforms. On the contrary, innovative minorities find it difficult to assemble 'legislative majorities' to get through important proposals in university senate meetings.

1.7 Low Academic Mobility

A general feature of social sciences in the Region is a low academic mobility. It starts with students who usually complete all three stages of their study (Bachelor and Masters degrees as well as doctorate) at one department or faculty. This model is then extended to the teaching staff as well. Few lecturers end up teaching at a university or even a department  different to that where they won their PhD. Due to strong cultural traditions and to structural barriers, such as the inaccessibility of affordable accommodation, university teachers in the Region rarely change the place of their academic employment. This is certainly one of the fundamental hindrances on teachers' academic experiences, personal development, and their ability to take part in joint and international research projects. The low academic mobility is also a strong factor maintaining huge disparities in quality between centres and more peripheral regions in individual countries. A greater staff mobility is an important prerequisite of the reform of social science in the Region.

Another feature that functions as a serious break in the development of social sciences is the legacy of the division of labour between universities which were, during the socialist period, primarily concerned with teaching, and Academies of Sciences that represented top research institutions in the Region. This persisting division weakens underdeveloped social sciences in the Region in several ways. At the most basic level, it undermines an already weak academic sphere in these countries. Second, it often deprives PhD students of the best supervisors, as they are often working in the Academy. Third, the Academy cannot take advantage of PhD programme contributions to its own research projects.

1.8 Uncertainties Related to Doctoral Programmes

Even in the most advanced countries of the Region, the labour market has taken little notice of the doctoral degree and, as Hrubos (1999) points out referring to the Hungarian situation, the position of postdoctoral status has not been determined in the system of jobs in an unambiguous way. The separation of PhD students from the best supervisors who tend to work in Academies of Science, as mentioned in the above section 1.7, and the allocation of doctoral programmes to universities which have comparatively fewer resources to operate high quality PhD programmes, might partly explain the still low numbers of postgraduate students across the Region. For instance, in Hungary PhD students make up a mere 4 per cent of all students in higher education (Hrubos, 1999). Speaking of Romania, Horobet and Chiritoiu (1999) criticise the emphasis that the Romanian higher education system still places on general qualifications while at same time neglects postgraduate studies. More specific issues related to doctoral degree programmes in the Czech Republic are presented in section 2.2 below.

2 SELECTED COUNTRY SPECIFIC ISSUES

The issues mentioned in the previous section are common to most countries covered in this report. However, largely unsystematic efforts to reform higher education in some countries of the Region led to problems unique to each country.

2.1 Romania: Failure of Private Universities to Become a Catalyst of the Change

Among the countries covered in this report, it is Romania that experienced the largest expansion of private universities. In the 1995-96 academic year a quarter (80 000) of all university students studied at private universities. While those few existing private universities in the Region provide education almost exclusively in the most lucrative disciplines, i.e. law, business studies and languages, the spectrum of disciplines taught at Romania's private universities is considerably wider, although still confined mainly to social sciences. In 1996 the majority of law students and more than half of students doing social and humanist science in Romania studied at private universities. However, as Horobet and Chiritoiu (1999) emphasize, the private universities have so far failed to offer an alternative to public universities. Research in private universities is negligible or non-existent. Only between 5 and 10 per cent of teachers at private universities are their own academic staff, the rest are teachers who work full-time at public universities. Relative to public universities, private universities also have a lower status and attract poorer students. This is explained by the informal privatisation of the pre-university public schooling. Many teachers are supplementing their income by private tutoring and poorer students who did not have this tutoring then find themselves unable to pass highly competitive entrance examination of public universities.

2.2 Czech Republic: The Failure of Postgraduate Programmes

It is quite likely that at present the Czech Republic runs, in economic terms, one of the most wasteful doctoral schemes in the world. Apparently only 8 per cent of Czech postgraduate students (i.e. PhD students) successfully complete their PhD programme and actually receive their degree. Until recently this success rate was 6 per cent! The history of the PhD programme at a department with which the author is quite familiar confirms this bleak general picture. Out of approximately 50 PhD students who were accepted since the inception of the programme in its new shape in 1992, 4 candidates defended their theses and were awarded doctoral degrees.

From an economic point of view, this completely inefficient system of PhD study must be one of the major 'internal reserves' of Czech higher education, as universities annually receive 60,000 Czech crowns (approximately 1700 USD) per PhD student from the state budget. Universities may then provide up to 100 percent of this amount to the student in the form of a stipend, but they usually retain a certain proportion of this money to boost the university budget. At present, Charles University in Prague, with its 17 faculties has 2500 PhD students of whom 1400 are concentrated only in two faculties. Rumours are circulating that some professors supervise as many as 80 PhD students. The result of a quick calculation is that those 2500 doctoral students at Charles University, of whom only about 200 are ever likely to get their doctorates, cost the Czech tax payer 4.25 million USD a year if we leave aside other losses incurred by this wasteful system, such as squandered time and energy of supervisors, costs of maintaining PhD laboratories, computer rooms and the like.

2.3 Poland And Lithuania: Student Inequality and an Educational System of Double Standards

Serious ethical, but also practical questions that have a direct bearing on lecturers, relate to the issue of tuition fees that were introduced in state or public universities in Poland and Lithuania. Speaking of Lithuania, Peruolis (1999) even claims that an unfair system of payment for studies is the biggest problem to normal work for university lecturers. Universities are currently allowed a 30 percent intake of students who finance their studies themselves, but in practice this quota is exceeded for two reasons: a great demand for higher education and financial shortages on the universities' side. Student fee-free places are determined by the academic performance of students that generates a fierce competition to get a free slot. Thus lecturers are pressured to raise the grade.

Kamusella (1999) claims that in Poland two thirds of university students pay fees for their tuition, but this proportion certainly varies from faculty to faculty. In any case, the Polish fee-paying students attend a university only at weekends since they have to work on week days to earn money for their fees. The problem is that as a result of this many teachers are forced to teach also at weekends, as this has become a major source of income of Polish universities. The consequences are serious. Teachers know that these students are academically weaker than their full time students (those who end up in a top group at the entrance exam to universities do not have to pay fees; they also have more time to study and are taught by teachers in their normal working hours) and hence have lower requirements of them. Thus the system creates double standards - on the one hand there are graduates who experienced academically less demanding study programmes and on the other hand graduates who had to study considerably harder to win the same degree that officially has the same value.

3 FINDINGS OF TWO CEP SURVEYS

Due to the absence of any assessment of social science and humanities teaching and research in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, a small CEP team5 circulated a survey in spring 1999 to all CEP members in these two countries. Due to the limited size of the sample6 , the information collected in this way cannot be regarded as representative of the Czech and Slovak social sciences and humanities. Nevertheless, it does provide valuable information about the surveyed departments - departments with which CEP is involved.

The answers to our questions drew a relatively bleak picture as far as academic credentials of these departments were concerned. With one exception, no department has a faculty development programme other than Novicius, which is a joint CEP/Jan Hus Educational Foundation programme. Only 14 out of 63 members of the surveyed departments have ever visited western academic institutions. Most of the visits that take place are short-term and do not involve teaching. These departments have a very limited number of foreign teachers on their staff. With one exception, no foreigners other than CEP Visiting Lecturers worked at the departments on a long term basis. Western academics usually visit Czech and Slovak departments for several days and give one or two lectures. This low degree of internationalisation was confirmed by answers to the question about the number of national and international projects in which members of the surveyed departments participate. While the number of national projects ranges between 1 and 7 per department, no single fully-fledged international project in which Czech or Slovak and foreign researchers would collaborate was reported by our respondents. A brief examination of academic periodicals by the respondents revealed a less than satisfactory integration of Czech and Slovak academics in the international research community. We asked our respondents to identify two international English language journals that they find most important and useful for their work. We then asked them to count the number of articles written by Czech, Slovak, Polish and Hungarian authors over the three-year period 1996 - 1998. Out of 558 articles, two turned out to have Polish authors, two were written by Hungarians, 1.75 articles by Czechs (some articles had several authors from different countries) and 1.5 were written by Slovaks. Thus, academics from these four countries authored 7.25 article which was 1.3 percent of the total number of articles published in these journals over the three-year period. The fact that some respondents were unable to supply this information because their library does not subscribe to journals they would need for their work was quite revealing in itself. One respondent commented that the two journals he named were the only two journals to which his department library subscribed.

In autumn 1999 another survey was sent to all CEP members in the Region with the purpose to compile more detailed information for this report. It yielded 29 responses out of which 13 came from Romania, 7 from the Czech Republic, 6 from Slovakia, 2 from Bulgaria and one from Poland (see Appendix 2 for the points included in the questionnaire).

The survey consisted of three parts. The first part listed 12 essential features that can be interpreted as an approximation of an ideal situation in which young social scientists could find themselves. Respondents were asked to indicate how much their personal experience differs from the ideal described in the survey. A clear winner with the average score 4.5 on the 1 - 5 scale was no surprise - 'adequate financial conditions for young academics', although some respondents pointed out that it is not just a question of salaries but that the whole educational system is severely underfinanced.

The following three points that turned out to be departing most from an ideal situation were more interesting, as at least to some extent the improvement of the situation can be achieved by activities of non-governmental institutions seeking to reform social sciences in the Region. They show that apart from farcical salaries that force young social scientists to leave academia or take up other jobs to make their ends meet, they also face other fundamental obstacles to becoming fully fledged university teachers. The second issue where reality considerably differs from the ideal situation is 'functional library with an adequate stock of books and journals providing open access to up-to-date literature, both foreign and domestic' (the average score 4.0). The remaining two points at which respondents found their own situation very different from the ideal were 'the ability of young faculty to publish the results of heir research in respected international journals including the availability of language and academic writing assistance' and 'the capacity of young faculty to influence power relations at their departments and faculties to advance reform at their departments and faculties to advance reform at these institutions' (the average score 3.9 in both cases).

Three points that proved to be least diverging from the ideal situation were:

-'opportunities for the development of young faculty teaching and research skills' (that scored 3.3 on average);

-'high quality scholarship, both at the theoretical and applied level, critical and analytical approach to research and teaching' (score 3.3)

-'international outlook, departments have established links to the West and other East European countries, participate in joint international research projects, have foreigners as teachers on their staff and students' (score 3.2).

The last point in particular certainly came as a bit of surprise, especially in the light of the spring 1999 Czech and Slovak survey that revealed a very low level of internationalisation of Czech and Slovak social science departments. However, it might simply be a question of priorities. Useless libraries and barred access to research funding are more basic problems that the 'internationalisation' of departments. Furthermore, the latter can, at least to some extent, be seen as a function of the former.

Even more interestingly, the last two points were also among three points in which views of Romanian on the one hand and Slovak and Czech respondents7 on the other hand, differed most. While Czech and Slovak respondents gave them on average 2.8 and 2.6 respectively, Romanian respondents were much more sceptical as their mean scores were 4.0 and 4.1. The identical size of the group of Romanian respondents and Czech and Slovak respondents (if they were treated together as a single group) enabled to me draw comparison between them. First of all, as one would expect, the Romanian group was much more pessimistic in their views (the overall average score was 4.22) than Slovaks and Czechs (3.37). Second, while Czechs and Slovaks saw the international outlook of social sciences in their countries and the issue of high quality scholarship of relatively minor importance (mean scores 2.6 and 2.8 against their overall average score for all 12 points of 3.37), for Romanians these two points did not significantly differ from the picture as whole (4.00 and 4.1 against the overall average score of 4.22). This results confirms a tentative feeling about the profoundly different degree of the depth of problems that young social scientists face in the Balkans and Central Europe. Several respondents from Romania emphasised the need to improve access to computers and the internet, issues that did not figure among responses from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

4 EXAMPLES OF INDIGENOUS SOLUTIONS

If we take the results of the two surveys at a face value, its seems that the three most pressing problems for young social scientists are inadequate remuneration for young academics, dysfunctional libraries, and access to publishing in renowned international journals. Most examples of solutions presented below directly address these issues.

4.1 Activities of Non-Governmental Actors

4.1.1 Jan Hus Educational Foundation

Higher education is a marginal field of foundations' activity in the Czech Republic. Only a few foundations, some of which are supported by Vaclav Havel, provide various types of grants for university students. However, as far as social sciences and humanities are concerned, there are only three major non-governmental actors. Two of them depend for their funding exclusively on foreign sources - CEP and the Soros Foundation network . The third, which is now at least partly financed from domestic sources is Jan Hus Educational Foundation that was established in the 1970s as an organization of Western academics who were supporting seminars in social sciences and humanities organized by dissidents in Czechoslovakia during the communist period. The Foundation still operates both in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Its aim is to support the development of social sciences and humanities. Apart from providing support for publishing original academic books in Czech and Slovak it also provides grants for translations of seminal western social science books. However, its two main programmes in the past three years were 'Cursus Innovati' aimed at curriculum innovation and 'Novicius'- a programme run jointly with CEP that aims at young faculty development.

4.1.2 Palacky University History Department Success Story

While several departments of Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic, were involved in some of the most shameful affairs in the post-1989 Czech academia (see section 1.5), there are clearly at least two other social science and humanities departments at this university that stand out from the grey average of Czech universities in quite a different way. These are the Department of Politics and European Studies and the Department of History. CEP has been cooperating with both of them for a number of years.

The Department of History is an example of a progressive department that was able, relying on its own resources but also in cooperation with CEP and Jan Hus Educational Foundation, to substantially change the overall approach to education and research in a relatively short time span. The fact that there is at least one more similarly progressive department at this university gives a more solid ground for a conviction that this is an irreversible development that has taken deeper roots and can be replicated at other universities. Of particular importance is the fact that Palacky University is what is in the Czech Republic called a 'regional university' located in a medium size city quite far from the two major academic centres - Prague and Brno. On the other hand and for sake of accuracy, it must also be said that Olomouc itself has an air of a 'university city' unparalleled by any other Czech city. It is perhaps no coincidence that the former rector of Palacky University was appointed a rector of Central European University. Olomouc might have become a place where reforms can be more easily carried out than elsewhere. However, these considerations should by no means diminish the achievements of Olomouc historians.

The Department of History used to have a reputation as a department that offered a 'cheap degree' with the least demanding study programme at the whole university. This is no longer true. While positive changes started to occur immediately after the fall of the previous regime once ideological constraints on history teaching were lifted, the beginning of deep and truly revolutionary changes dates only to three years ago. First of all, more demanding requirements on students have been introduced and as a consequence history in Olomouc is no longer a 'cheap degree'. Second, the old way of learning best described as a passive absorption of 'facts" that are then spat back to the examiner during an oral examination, has been replaced with a more participatory approach that requires students' active participation in lectures and seminars and that no longer relies on their absorption of 'truth'. There has also been a shift away from uncritical memorising of facts to essay-writing that offers an opportunity for a more analytical approach to history and which gives students a larger degree of freedom in developing their own arguments. Third, as far as the curriculum is concerned, methodologically dated distinction of history teaching between 'Czech History' and 'General History' has been abandoned in favour of a more integrated approach to the subject. The department has also established and forged links with several history departments abroad including US universities. The Olomouc historians now regularly teach foreign, mainly American students to which purpose they developed a special history programme in English.

Two factors have been decisive in the transition of the Olomouc History from an old-fashioned to progressive department that sets an example for the rest of the discipline departments and possibly other departments in the country. The key figure to the success is a progressive head of the department who is keen on raising the standards of education provided by his department. At the same time, the department has a strong group of young lecturers - fresh graduates or post-graduates from foreign universities, including Central European University. The head of the department gave them a free hand to develop syllabi of their courses and methods of teaching in the manner with which they became acquainted while abroad as students. The atmosphere of cooperation and common goal is certainly an important element in this success. CEP has definitely significantly contributed to this change by providing support to several young lecturers and working closely with the head of the department.

4.1.3 Romanian Journal of Liberal Arts

Some time ago the CEP academic co-ordinator in Romania noticed the absence of a forum in which young academics from various social science and humanities disciplines could exchange their ideas and results of research and present them to a wider academic community. Most departments published journals to which researchers from the outside had a restricted access. Undeniably there was a need to start a journal that would provide an alternative to these closed networks and that would publish articles. After several unsuccessful attempts to find a publishing house and a source of financial support for this project, CEP Romania and Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca joined forces and launched the journal earlier this year. The university's publishing house publishes the journal at the cost price which is met by CEP. This English-language journal is published twice a year. Its first issue contains articles and essays on a diverse range of topics including the critique of desecralization in Mircea Eliade, the Romanian health care system, and gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the Romanian workplace. The second issue of the journal is scheduled for February 2000.

4.2 Government Programmes

4.2.1 The New Higher Education Development Programmes in Hungary

Recent changes in the Hungarian government's financing policies for higher education based on numbers of participants led to the need of finding a source of funding for essential activities that the newly introduced system left out. All these programmes took effect in 1997 and are operated on a competitive basis.

Szechenyi Scholarship provides to winning scholars a gross stipend that equals the minimum wage multiplied by eight. The scholarship is awarded to 500 candidates annually. Its objective is to enable holders to maintain a high quality of lecturing and research by eliminating the need to supplement university teachers' income from other jobs.

Higher Education Textbook, specialist textbook and Library Support Programmes is an answer to the most urgent need identified by CEP members in the autumn 1999 survey (if we leave aside the issue of notoriously low salaries) which is the shortage of academic literature, let alone academic literature in CEE languages, and a poor standard of libraries in general. This programme provides assistance both to libraries and to publishing textbooks, dictionaries, lexicons, and teaching aids. The objective is to improve the supply of professional literature for students and teaching staff through the production of new basic textbooks. The amount allocated to this programme in 1998 was about 2.5 million USD.

Higher Education Development and Modernisation Programme's objective is to support the implementation of higher education programmes which contribute to the modernisation of the system of higher education with special emphasis placed on support for specialised courses operating with smaller student numbers, the qualitative development of educational technology and development of international educational and research relationships as well as support for students with outstanding abilities.

Higher Education Research and Development Programme aims to promote, establish and operate centres of excellence.

4.2.2 Czech Government's Reform Intentions

Ten years after the fall of the communist regime and after some mainly organisational and administrative incremental reforms concerning Czech universities, the Czech Ministry of Education has eventually invited all interested parties to begin a public debate about the future development of education with a special emphasis given to higher education. The Ministry intends to publish the White Book on the Czech Educational System by November 2000. To that end the Ministry published a preliminary document on its web pages in order to facilitate public discussion. The reforms envisaged in this document in many respects address the most pressing problems of Czech higher education. For example, the document suggests that a scheme similar to the Hungarian Szechenyi Programme (see above in section 4.2.1) should be introduced that would, at least to some proportion of university lecturers, enable them to concentrate on teaching and research. Another issue that is of particular importance to CEP Eastern Scholars, is the idea that Czech citizens who study abroad and pay for their education from their own pocket, should be entitled to the government financial support that equals the cost of study for Czech students studying at domestic universities (Kvackova 1999).

Another recent positive development was the decision of the Czech Ministry of Education and the Government Scientific Council to publish the results of the evaluation of the international standing of the quality of Czech research output. The results of Czech research were evaluated according to the following three criteria: the number of publications per one researcher, the number of citations of articles in 8000 academic journals listed by the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information, and the citation index. While according to the first criterion Czech academia is only marginally worse than the EU average (a Czech researcher publishes one article in 7 years against one article in 6 years in the EU), the application of the second criterion - the number of citations - revealed wider discrepancies. On average, a Czech academic is cited once in 3 years, while an EU academic is cited once a year. Since Czechs produce a relatively high number of publications that are rarely cited, the citation index is quite low. The Czech Republic ended ranked 29th among 33 European countries and 45th world-wide according to this criterion. In the light of arguments presented in this report, it should not come as a surprise that academic articles written by Czech authors have a citation index higher than the average of the first best 100 countries only in scientific and technical disciplines - in mathematics, computer science, civil engineering, and machine-tool engineering.

CONCLUSION

The goal of this report was to present an overview of the situation that faces young social scientists working in higher education in Central Europe, the Balkans and the Baltics. Without claiming to be a comprehensive analysis of problems of social science in the region, it provides insight into several areas critical to the success of the reform of social sciences.

The report first addressed selected major trends in the region's academia that have a strong bearing on the professional development of young social scientists. Most of these issues are common to all countries covered in this report:

* Many countries have experienced two- and even four-fold increases in student numbers in higher education. These increases have not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in financial resources and teaching staff, resulting in a significant increase in teaching workload. These developments severely affect the social sciences, which have experienced one of the largest expansions of student numbers, while resources, due to constraints inherited from the past, are extremely limited.

* The development of research in the social sciences is hindered by a persisting division of responsibility between Academies of Science (primarily research institutions) and universities (mainly teaching institutions).  This division negatively affects, among other things, the quality of doctoral programmes.

* Paradoxically, the reform of social sciences is blocked by the main political innovation of higher education--university autonomy. The active minority is often unable to push reforms through academic senates.

* Low academic mobility is a fundamental hindrance to faculty members' academic experiences, personal development, and ability to take part in joint and international research projects. Low academic mobility is a strong factor in perpetuating huge disparities in quality between centres and more peripheral regions in individual countries.

As a consequence of largely unsystematic efforts to reform higher education, specific problems affecting social science development have emerged:

* In Romania, private universities, which account for half of the students in the social sciences, have failed to become a catalyst for change in social science teaching and research.

* In Czech Republic, postgraduate programmes are unproductive and often failing, with a mere 8 percent of PhD students completing their degrees.

* In Poland and Lithuania, unsystematic introduction of tuition fees has led to student inequities and educational double standards.

Two surveys circulated to Civic Education Project (CEP) Fellows in the region revealed that these young social scientists regard the following four areas as most critical for the reform of social sciences:

* Adequate financial conditions for young academics.

* Functional libraries with an adequate stock of books and journals providing access to up-to-date literature, both foreign and domestic.

* Improving the capacity of young faculty to publish their research in respected international journals, including the availability of language and academic writing assistance.

* Increasing the capacity of young faculty to influence power relations at their departments and faculties in order to advance reform.

There are emerging, but still sparse, programmes and projects that have directly or indirectly addressed some of these issues. Both governmental and non-governmental actors take part in these activities:

* Jan Hus Educational Foundation, operating in the Czech and Slovak Republics, supports the publication of original academic books in Czech and Slovak, provides grants for translations of seminal western social science books and runs programmes aimed at young faculty development.

* CEP's English-language Romanian Journal of Society and Politics helps fill the gap in Romanian social science publications and helps local academics reach a wider international audience.

* The New Higher Education Development Programmes initiated and financed by the Hungarian government enable selected Hungarian academics to maintain high quality teaching and research by supplementing their income and providing grants for publishing teaching materials and for innovative approaches to teaching.

* The Czech government has published and disseminated the results of a study on the international standing of Czech academic output.

The tentative and rather gloomy conclusion based on these developments is that more than a decade of reforms brought only modest improvements in terms of opportunities for young social scientists in the Region to become internationally fully competitive scholars. It is equally true, however, that without the involvement of some essentially western actors that have systematically sought to strengthen the quality of social sciences in the Region, the situation would have been even bleaker.

References:

Horobet, A., Chiritoiu, B. (1999) Euro-shape and Local Content: The bottom line of Romanian higher education reform. Report prepared for the Second Annual CEP Eastern Scholars Roundtable, Lviv, Ukraine.

Hrubos, I. (1999) Transformation of the Hungarian Higher Education System in the 1990s. Report prepared for the Second Annual CEP Eastern Scholars Roundtable, Lviv, Ukraine.

Jehlicka, P, Stejskal, J. (1999) Czech Republic Country Report. Report prepared for the Second Annual CEP Eastern Scholars Roundtable, Lviv, Ukraine.

Kamusella, T. (1999) Country Report - Poland. Report prepared for the Second Annual CEP Eastern Scholars Roundtable, Lviv, Ukraine.

Kvackova, R. (1999) Bude plat univerzitnich ucitelu 50 000 korun? (University teachers to get 50 000 Czech crowns?) Lidove noviny, Supplement Akademie, 24 September.

Nemecek, T. (1999) Pravnikem snadno a rychle. (How to become a lawyer quickly and easily), Respekt, No. 30.

Peruolis, D. (1999) Relevance of TOR assumptions in the Lithuanian context.

1. The author wishes to thank all CEP Visiting Lecturers Eastern Scholars and CEP staff who helped to compile data and information for this report. I particularly appreciate the assistance and support provided by Liana Ghent and Zora Vidovencova.

2. Here I have in mind disciplines that under socialism existed in a strongly reductionist shape and with an emphasis placed on their empirical and applied side (sociology, demography, social geography, economics) and disciplines that were virtually non-existent (for instance political philosophy and international relations).

3. For more details see Petr Jehlicka and Jan Stejskal's report for the 1999 CEP Lviv Round Table.

4. For sake of accuracy it has to be stressed that in certain disciplines an opposite trend occurred. For instance, much fewer students choose to study chemistry or, under the communist regime privileged geology, partly because these are highly demanding study programmes and the prospect of getting a job after graduation is limited.

5. The team consisted of two Eastern Scholars, Petr Jehlicka and Jan Stejskal and Zora Vidovencoca, the Czech and Slovak CEP Country Director.

6. A slight majority of CEP members in the CR and two Visiting Lecturers working in Slovakia answered the survey.

7. For sake of simplicity I refer to respondents who answered the survey in Romanian as Romanian respondents and those who answered in the Czech Republic and Slovakia as Czech and Slovak respondents. However, in both cases, several respondents were Western Visiting Lecturers working in these countries.

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