Authoritarian control of higher education as a determinant of management and financing of higher education in the People’s Republic of Poland

Abstract

The article concerns a system of reforms of higher education in Poland in a time of Polish People’s Republic, in 1945–1989, which is adequate to top-down imposed and strictly respected Soviet patterns that were in force in all spheres of political, economic, and cultural life. The authors analyse a system of managing and financing of universities on the basis of legal regulations that indicated a direction, character, and a scope of activities set for universities by communist authorities in order to “build a socialist state and educate new intelligentsia”. The article also considers the issue of central control of university’s activities system separation of education from research bureaucratization and parametrization of all levels of education, top-down employment levels and structuring, closure to international exchange and inefficient financing, and asset management, which in consequence led universities to collapse at the end of 1980s.