Despite the fact that European states hold formal regulatory competences in higher education, the coordination of reforms increasingly takes place on the international and transnational platforms/processes. A growing number of European level policy and political initiatives (in particular the Bologna Process and EU institutions) are sources of political action, where it is possible to trace the discourses and ideas about the present and future of higher education in Europe. This research project is outlining the ideations of higher education within the European political and policy arena, thereby opening an insight into the Europeanization of higher education from the ideational perspective and eventually shedding light on the meaning attributed to higher education in contemporary Europe.
In terms of analytical approaches, complementing the Discursive Institutionalism (a branch of new institutionalism) with the historicist and critical theory represents an innovative blend and thereby a new contribution to the scholarship on Europeanisation of higher education. The analysis is based on a particular set of ideational rules and discursive regularities that emerge in the context of Europeanisation of higher education and follow a particular logic of communication. The institutions are viewed both as structures – a context that constrains, or enables, the agents, and as constructs that are contingent to agents’ thoughts, words and action. The ideational dynamism was contextualised in the change and continuity of the historical structures and thereby the study accounted for the larger picture of the social world and the spirit of the time.
The interpretation of the field data suggests that to a certain extent Europe continues to adhere to roles and purposes attributed to higher education in the liberal humanist spirit of the time and the welfare-state programmatic hegemony. These ideas remain embedded in the historical structure. In the analysed policy arenas they act as guardians against radical and rapid interventions into the higher education sector. However, the historical-structural background has changed over past decades and triggered dynamism in the ideation of higher education. The discursive interaction in European policy arenas clearly indicates the emergence of new and powerful ideations of higher education. Higher education has departed from serving the grand projects of the emancipation of humanity, the idealistic unity of knowledge and empowerment of economically disadvantaged social groups. It is now set on the path to becoming increasingly ideated as a public investment that is supposed to yield to the economic competitiveness and immediate use of individuals and groups. Moreover, on a more fundamental level, one can discern the silhouette of the idea of higher education as a commodity that is valued in terms of exchange and its income generating potential on the global market of services. The identified ideatios meet, match and clash within the European policy arenas. Accordingly, this research has brought us to the conclusion about the streams of ideating higher education, the relationship between them and interpretation of the overall direction of the institutional change.
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