Science and Technology in Central and Eastern Europe

The Reform of Higher Education

Anthony Tillet, Barry Lesser, A.D. Tillett, Barry Lesser, A.D. Tillett, Barry Lesser

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135579258
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The political upheavals in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe have produced profound social, educational, and economic changes. Once a centerpiece of the communist state, the study of science and technology in the university has now fallen victim to economic and social disarray. Support for the teaching and funding of science and technology is of primary importance for the economic health of any modern nation. The ten chapters of this work examine what happens to a scientific and technological establishiment that suddenly has to make its own way as exemplified in many countries worldwide today.

Part One

Introduction

Chapter One

The Context of Change

Barry Lesser and A.D. Tillett

The transformation taking place in the former Soviet Union (FSU) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is affecting all facets of those societies. One area that causes some concern is what is happening to universities and research institutions. More specifically, the larger process of political and economic liberalization now underway in Eastern and Central Europe is, at least in the short term, having a debilitating impact on institutions of science and technology. At the same time, these institutions themselves are experiencing pressures for change in order to adapt to the new political and economic order. An important question is whether they can withstand the negative pressures from the larger process of change long enough to complete their internal transformation so as to become viable institutions in the new economic and political environment.

That is not a trivial question. Institutions of science and technology have a key role to play in the long-term transformation of the economies of Eastern and Central Europe. The Soviet system created a relatively high-level science and technology infrastructure. It was not without problems; indeed, it is an understatement to say that it was a highly imperfect system. But for all of its faults, an infrastructure was developed.¹ This is now in danger of collapsing through a lack of funding, migration of skilled personnel, internal resistance to change, and other such factors. If that happens—that is, the existing system does collapse—the entire process of transformation will falter, not just in the institutions of science and technology but also in the countries as a whole. If, on the other hand, the system maintains itself but fails to adapt appropriately to the new realities, its contribution to the long-term process of change and economic revitalization will be trivial at best, and the larger transformation process will again be threatened. Thus, what happens to the scientific and technological infrastructure in Eastern and Central Europe matters a great deal.

These are the questions that have driven this study of the institutions of science and technology, and, more broadly, higher-education institutions, in the former Soviet hegemony. There is a need to understand the importance of these institutions, their current status, their future prospects, the process of internal revitalization, and their ability to withstand the multitude of pressures they are experiencing. This understanding, in turn, will allow a determination to be made of how best to assist these institutions in the short term in order to ensure that their long-term potential contribution is secured.

This study consists of a series of review papers focusing on some or all of these issues as they relate to different countries of the former Soviet bloc, including Russia. In this first chapter, we try to set the stage for the country reviews that follow by looking briefly at the role of science and technology in the process of economic development and growth. This is followed by brief comments on some of the salient characteristics of Soviet policy and institutions relevant to science and technology, and highlights of the problems confronted and changes occurring in those institutions.

The country reviews that follow this chapter are in turn followed by an examination of the experience and lessons gained from other jurisdictions and a final chapter of summary and conclusions.

Overview of the Role of Science and Technology in the Economy

Economic growth reflects the success which a country has had in mobilizing its resources to achieve technological breakthroughs.²

This view of technology and its role in economic growth is a common one, certainly in the context of the historical evolution of the Western industrialized economies. The questions it raises, however, are many, even if we accept the statement at face value; chief among these questions is why some societies seem to have a greater capacity for generating technological change than others.

The answer to this question is far from simple and is still fiercely discussed. But clearly, one of the major factors that explain differences in the rates of invention and innovation among countries in this century is the varying level and quality of those countries’ science and technology infrastructures. This is not to suggest that the latter is a sufficient condition for technological progress, nor that the conditions for invention and innovation are even the same—they are not. It is to suggest that a high-quality and adequately sized science and technology infrastructure has become a necessary condition for technological progress and hence, for economic advancement.

Equally important is the link between science and technology on the one hand and the educational system on the other. The educational system is important for at least two reasons:

1. It is the source of personnel required by a society to undertake the invention, innovation, and diffusion of science and technology.

2. It is an important focus of direct research that advances the science knowledge and pace of technological advance in a society.

David Landes, in his classic work on technological change, notes that at the commencement of the industrial revolution, the needs of industry confirmed two highly relevant constraints, those of “scarcity of skills and scarcity of venture capital.”³ On the scarcity of skills, Landes notes:

Skills are learned. And the supply of skills to industry is essentially dependent on education.… By education we really mean the imparting of four kinds of knowledge, each with its own contribution to make to economic performance: (1) the ability to read, write and calculate; (2) the working skills of the craftsman and mechanic; (3) the engineer’s combination of scientific principle and applied training; and (4) high level scientific knowledge, theoretical and applied.⁴

Many studies, too numerous to mention here, have confirmed that engineering and basic and applied science are key areas of knowledge contributing to economic performance. Landes draws our attention to the essential links between skills in the marketplace/workplace and the educational system.

The link from science to technology to the economy is not a simple one. The embedding of much of science within educational and research institutions increases the complexity of the relationships even further. As Douglass North has noted:

The systematic demand for scientific knowledge is a modern phenomenon and is surely related to a growing perception of its usefulness in solving practical problems. A distinctive feature of its institutionalization in universities and research organizations is the recognition of social demands on a broad front. Advances in scientific knowledge must proceed along a wide variety of lines so that our ability to employ developments in one area is not impeded by bottlenecks in another.⁵

This statement underlines the arguments already made regarding the institutionalization of science and technology and the role of scientific knowledge. But North adds another dimension to the relationship between science and economic performance in introducing the notion of “social demands” on science, representing demands that clearly extend beyond the purely economic.

Social demands further complicate the incentive structure in place for the development of science and the transfer of scientific knowledge into usable techniques (technology) and the subsequent adoption (diffusion) of technology. Landes notes that, in spite of the argument that science and technology contribute to economic success, “[t]here is [a] discrepancy between cognitive inputs and economic outputs,” that is, the empirical evidence does not necessarily support the hypothesis of the relationship between the two. But the reason for this is precisely the complexity of the relationship as we have been describing it.

The complexity of the role of science and technology vis-a-vis economic progress makes it particularly difficult to “prove” the relationship in any simple, empirical way. Clearly, the private sector and applied-research facilities within corporations have a significant role, as do Norths “social demands.” But equally clearly, basic research in scientific institutions and applications that flow from such work, as well as the training of new cadres of scientists and engineers, also play an important role.

This very brief overview of the role of science and technology in economic development does not begin to do justice either to the arguments regarding the nature of the relationship nor to the vast amount of existing literature that explores this issue. Nonetheless, several conclusions emerge from this discussion that are relevant to the purpose of this paper:

1. Science and technology are important to the fostering of longterm economic growth.

2. Science and technology institutions have an important role to play in realizing the contribution of science and technology to economic growth through their function as educational institutions and research institutions.

3. Basic science, as well as applied science, contributes to the impact of science and technology and hence, long-term economic prosperity.

4. Just as important as a specific body of scientific knowledge is the ability of a country or an economy to understand when and how to apply such knowledge to specific problems—Norths ‘social demands.” In different words, Robert Reich (1990) has described this point as follows:

Policy makers have failed to understand that a nation’s real technological assets are the capacities of its citizens to solve the complex problems of the future—which depend, in turn, on their experience in solving today’s and yesterday’s.⁶

Such capacity is very much a function of higher education.

An Overview of the Soviet Model

Space does not permit a long discussion of the features of the Soviet model of science and technology. The papers that follow all describe certain aspects of this system in the countries with which they deal. At this point, we simply summarize some of the main features of the system as outlined in these papers and in a few other sources (for example, Parrott⁷):

1. There was a relatively high, if inefficient, level of integration between institutions of science and technology on the one hand and the planning process on the other.

2. It follows that the science and technology infrastructure was highly centralized in terms of control and direction—that is, in setting priorities.

3. Military related research and science dominated the science and technology agenda. Much effort and many state resources were put into the development of a relatively small number of areas of high expertise, while most other areas were underfunded and of low(er) quality.

4. The system was highly politicized. Researchers advanced in the system as much for their politics as for the quality of their science. At the very least, no researchers could survive, under normal circumstances, if they were judged “politically incorrect”—that is, if they did anything of an overt nature to criticize or undermine the established political order. In the worst cases, such as Romania, the system was absolutely suborned by the political system.

5. As a consequence of the political factor, scientists of less than top quality often ended up responsible for the system because they were politically acceptable or, in many cases, as part of the overt political reward system.

6. The scientific community was, to a significant degree, cut off from contact with the international scientific community. At times, the political factor verged on paranoia, leading to immediate suspicion of anyone in regular communication with Western counterparts. Only “politically safe” scientists were allowed to travel to scientific conferences in the West (as a reinforcement for good behavior); these were typically not the persons best able to benefit from such meetings and interactions.

7. There was a separation of teaching and research. Whereas in the West these functions, at least in terms of basic science, are integrated in university institutions to a high degree, in the Soviet system they were separated. Universities or technical schools performed the teaching and education function, and research academies and institutions carried out research.

8. For teaching institutions, politics were also an essential part of the curriculum, both in the direct sense of specific and mandatory political courses on Marxist thought, social economics, and the like, and, indirectly, through the prohibition of politically unacceptable content in any other courses. This censorship led to large omissions or, at the very least, distortions of the material taught to students.

9. In the research institutions, the scientific agenda was almost entirely driven by the political and central-economic planning mechanisms; that is, there was little or no research autonomy.

10. The system was entirely state funded. Students paid no fees and were in fact supported during their program of study. Equipment, salaries, and so forth, in both the educational and research institutions, were part of the state budget, provided either directly or indirectly via grants from specific ministries or state-owned enterprises. Significantly, the scientific community was relatively well-treated in terms of salary and other benefits—partly a means of ensuring right behavior a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Editor's Preface
• Preface
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• The Context of Change
• Transition Country Experiences
• Russia Higher Education and Change
• Russia Science in the Post-Soviet Disunion
• Science, Technology, and Higher Education in the Baltics
• Poland Higher Education and Science—A Survey
• Romania Legacy and Change—Reform of Higher Education and Restoration of Academic Work
• Czechoslovakia Higher Education, Science, and Change
• Germany Restructuring of the Universities, Colleges, and Research Institutions in Eastern Germany
• Future Directions
• World Bank Lending for Higher Education and Research Lessons and Implications for Eastern Europe
• The Way Ahead Lessons and Prospects for the Future
• Index