Klemen Miklavič

Academic Values Against the Commodification of Higher Education

The Bologna Process is the central political initiative in the context of the Europeanisation of higher education and perhaps the most influential pan-European policy initiative addressing the higher education field and affecting the national-level policies. The paper investigates the meaning and role of the concept of academic values in the Bologna Process. Academic values as a discursive element appeared in a specific period of the process and were closely associated with listing education on the agenda of WTO negotiations on trade in services. The paper argues that this concept was introduced in function of resistance to global trends to reconceptualise the meaning and nature of higher education, referring to it as a commodity in the global market. This also indicates that the discursive and ideational framework established by the idea of the knowledge society and economy is not the only imaginary in which the visions, ideas, discursive practice and policy goals are created. The discursive meaning of higher education in the Bologna Process takes form on a number of levels or discursive planes, involving several semantic fields.

Between Western Ideals and Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Post-socialist Europe followed the considerable expansion of higher education, as witnessed in most of the Western European countries in past decades, with a similar dynamic, but with a considerable delay. It is only recently reaching the steepest parts of the upwards sloping curve in countries of the Western Balkans. This part of Europe is a post-conflict region where tensions and conflicts of various types are still present in its societies.