Necessary changes,adverse effects? The institutional patterns of adaptation of economics universities to changes prompted by the reform of Poland’s science and higher education system

Abstract

The currently implemented reform of Poland’s science and higher education system extensively draws on the principles of new public management in both curricula and management. It also replicates, at times uncritically, the changes put into effect in European higher education institutions. As early as 2017, the intentions of the decision makers were made clear by the introduction of a new funding algorithm, which completely altered the existing rules of the game. This algorithm particularly affected public economics universities, which were forced to make some adaptations. In this article, we focus on ways in which economics universities adapted to two specific solutions proposed by the legislator, that is, (1) the new funding algorithm and (2) the new career path called ‘teaching professorship’. Based on an in-depth study and using the theories of new institutionalism, we explore the mechanisms of adaptation to the new provisions as they apply to public economics universities. Finally, we identify and discuss four kinds of risks resulting directly from the new public management–based assumptions adopted by the reformers, namely, (1) the invasiveness of the proposed changes, (2) the fragmentary perception of the science and higher education system, (3) the inconsistency of the actions and (4) the ostensible adaptation measures taken by the institutions.

Keywords

Higher education instrumental adaptation new institutionalism new public management teaching

Introduction

Over the last three decades, several reforms implemented throughout Europe have significantly changed the image of modern higher education (HE) institutions (Gornitzka et al., 2005). These reforms, ideologically rooted in mainstream new public management (NPM), focused on the professionalisation of universities and introduced them to a new kind of culture, typical of business organisation, called ‘output-oriented’ or ‘target’ culture (Deem, 2004; Deem and Brehony, 2014; Deem et al., 2005; Giroux, 2002; Leisyte et al., 2009; Teelken, 2015). These reforms have often been undertaken as part of broader efforts to modernise the public sector, which involved changes in the role of the state and the mechanisms for steering public actors. (De Boer et al., 2017). Factors such as market competition, seeking competitive advantages, striving for financial efficiency and profit-orientation have become the benchmark parameters for a significant proportion of European universities (Askling, 2001; Parker, 2018; Springer and Clinton, 2017; Visser, 2016) and particularly business schools (e.g. Bennis and O’Toole, 2005; Huzzard et al., 2017; Koris et al., 2017). The recent reform of the system of science and HE in Poland (Constitution for Science, also known as Act 2.0) appears to be well-aligned with this trend.

The reform intends to address genuine problems faced by Polish universities, including their locally restricted appeal and low international recognition, a low number of publications by university staff, and the massification of HE combined with questionable quality of education (Antonowicz, 2015; Kwiek, 2019). The mechanisms and tools proposed by the reformers come from international practices, with Poland drawing on the experience of those countries where changes were introduced to professionalise the HE institutions and transform them into a vaguely defined ideal, such as a ‘world-class university’. Even so, the implementation of corporate university management mechanisms in some countries sparked a debate on their adverse effects, such as significantly reduced job satisfaction, professional burnout of academics, or a cynical approach to research and teaching (e.g. Chandler et al., 2002; Cheng, 2012; Craig et al., 2014; Fredman and Doughney, 2016; Huzzard et al., 2017; Kenny, 2018; Teelken, 2015).

Poland’s public economics universities have been strongly affected by the changes introduced by the reform process. Faced with the prospect of losing financial stability (as a result of the modified funding algorithm), they rallied to make some rapid and sometimes drastic financial and organisational adjustments. Based on our observations of the processes and mechanisms operating in this microcosm, we discuss the risks associated with the reform of science and HE in Poland.

In this article, we are particularly interested in decisions that affect the educational outcomes of the reform. These decisions include (1) the new funding algorithm intended to reduce the massification of HE and (2) the new evaluation system where the universities are penalised for every less productive employee (so-called N-zero), introduced together with a new form of professional development path (the teaching professorship). These two changes are actually related. The rapid introduction of a new funding algorithm is an essential element in interpreting the decisions regarding the teaching professorship.

The study summarises the findings of a 2-year research project financed under the Dialogue Programme (by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education) titled The Ways of Adapting Economics Universities to Changes Caused by the Reform of HE System in Poland (Act 2.0). The aim of the project was (among other things) to diagnose the status of Poland’s economics universities based on the existing data and qualitative analyses as well as to offer a critical ex ante reflection on the intended and unintended consequences of Act 2.0 for these institutions.

The purpose of this article is to address the following questions:

How do public economics universities in Poland adapt to selected changes imposed by the reform of the science and HE system, so deeply rooted in NPM ideology?

To what extent are the selected adaptation strategies consistent with the expectations of the legislation?

What characteristics of the reform process favour those university adaptation strategies that are inconsistent with the expectations of the legislation?

To answer these questions, we analysed the effects of the introduced institutional-level mechanisms in response to Act 2.0 (adaptation models). As a theoretical foundation for the analysis, we adopted a conceptual framework of public choice theory along with sociological and discursive institutionalism.

This article is structured as follows: this introduction is followed by a section on the reforms of the Science and Higher Education System in the mainstream of NPM and a discussion of the ideological roots of Polish reform. The next section presents the research methodology and the HE system in Poland, which provide the background for further analyses. Then, the empirical findings on consequences of the new university funding algorithm and the introduction of the teaching professorship as a new career path are described.

NPM, reforms of the Science and Higher Education System, and the erosion of teaching standards

Since the late 1970s, the traditional model of state activity and its public policies have come under increasingly severe criticism for excessive burden on public finance, unreasonably high service provision costs, unsatisfactory quality, low responsiveness, and lack of adaptability to challenges posed by dynamic social and economic transformations (Hood, 1995). This criticism was reinforced in the 1980s by the dominance of neoliberal ideology postulating a ‘rollback of the state’ and limiting its activity in the sphere of public policies as well as the belief in the superiority of corporate management methods over the typical public sector mechanisms (Peck and Tickell, 2002). The ideological basis for NPM was constituted on one hand by the belief that it was impossible to maintain the costly and inefficient welfare state model and on the other by the strong neoliberal faith in the positive effects of the free market logic introduced into the public sector (Ferlie et al., 2005; Pollitt et al., 2007).

These NPM reforms significantly differed by country (Hood, 1995). Nevertheless, they had specific common attributes, including (1) a belief in the inevitability of a radical overhaul of the public sector’s operating logic (e.g. privatisation, deregulation, demonopolisation, productivity growth and introduction of internal competition), (2) the rationale behind using market-based instruments for managing public affairs (performance-oriented management, audit, evaluation, quality orientation, strengthening the role of public managers, broadening organisational autonomy, use of economic incentives to control the behaviour of public organisations, setting public service standards and benchmarking, and specialised executive agencies) and (3) the need to marketise the performance of public tasks (e.g. profit-orientation, privatisation, contracting, public–private partnerships and strengthening cooperation with the private sector) (Bouckaert and Pollitt, 2004; Salamon, 2002).

The growing importance of neoliberalism and the associated effects of globalisation had a significant impact on the relations of the HE sector with the state and the market, resulting in its diversification, decentralisation and deregulation (Rhoades and Sporn, 2002). NPM became the dominant approach to research and teaching management in several countries; its instruments being widely applied in this sector (e.g. Clark, 1999; Marginson and Considine, 2000). This resulted in frozen or even reduced public spending on universities, diversification of their sources of income and an increasing proportion of university funding based on a variety of competitive performance assessment formulae (Estermann and Nokkala, 2009; Ter Bogt and Scapens, 2012). In many European countries, the share of non-public resources in the funding of public HE has also increased since the 1990s. These developments triggered a reorientation of HE systems towards entrepreneurial behaviours (Broucker et al., 2017; Deem, 2011).

As part of this drive, various councils and committees with a strong presence of, or even dominated by, people from outside the universities were incorporated into their organisational structures, and important functions were assigned to them, for example, the selection of university managers, strategic planning and budgetary decisions (Mignot, 2003). These changes in the organisational culture of universities meant that their management had to be professionalised, which established additional managerial positions (Maassen, 2000) and strengthened the position of university rectors at the expense of collegiality (Gumport, 2000; Rhoades and Sporn, 2002). Furthermore, these changes were complemented by the evaluation of the quality of research and teaching carried out using complex, parametrised, and formalised criteria or systems (Rhoades and Sporn, 2002).

Despite the initial fascination with NPM ideology, which, in promising rapid and low-cost change, proved to be particularly attractive to decision makers, the late 1990s saw a wave of sharp criticism of ill-considered and mechanistically implemented reforms, focused on demonstrating their negative consequences for universities (e.g. Broucker et al., 2017; Chandler et al., 2002; Cheng, 2012; Craig et al., 2014; Kenny, 2018; Lucas, 2019; Teelken, 2015; Westerheijden, 2018). One such consequence was the widening gap between academic research and teaching, associated with a decline in the profile of the latter in the case of research universities (Lemass and Stace, 2010; Young, 2006). Analysts attribute this process to increased pressure on universities to compete globally for research funding and for visibility in the international scientific arena, to more restrictive domestic policies for funding academic institutions (reduced spending on HE and research plus increased accountability of research institutions through the introduction of performance management systems) and to university funding being tied to the research output of the staff (e.g. Drennan, 2001; Smith and Smith, 2012).

The mechanisms implemented at the ministry level (e.g. performance management and performance-based funding) were transferred to individual universities. By professionalising their activities, the universities adopted management strategies from the corporate world (Deem et al., 2005; Watts, 2017). Professionalisation taking place separately in each of the individual subsystems widened the gap between the traditionally complementary university functions, namely, research and teaching (Geschwind and Broström, 2015). As a result, the coherent university mission was replaced by clearly split research and teaching responsibilities, with two parallel, often poorly communicating, sectors emerging. This process, called ‘teaching drift’ and ‘research drift’ by Clark (1995), takes on different forms and occurs in several European countries. According to Clark (1995), throughout the HE system, it manifests itself as institutional specialisation, which divorces research-oriented entities from universities seen as educational institutions. On the micro-scale, which is of greater interest in this article, clear-cut distinctions are made between research and teaching positions, reinforced by the separation of the employees and their responsibilities.

Symptomatic of the fragmentation of roles played by academics is the introduction of a new kind of position, the so-called ‘university lecturer’, or a teacher who is not obliged to participate in research (Askling, 2001; Clark, 1995). Clark (1995) identifies two classes of university staff not only entrusted with different tasks and functions but also having different status and prestige: the ‘professors’ versus the ‘teachers’. Nowadays, the distinction between research and teaching, as well as the increasing importance of research at the expense of teaching is strengthened by the practices pursued by numerous universities, the aim of which is to boost the research productivity of their employees. Freeing up creative researchers from their teaching duties, known as ‘buying-out teaching’ (Smith and Smith, 2012; Ter Bogt and Scapens, 2012), consists of transferring teaching time to research activity. Admittedly, it encourages publication activity but generates additional risks, such as a decline in the quality of teaching resulting from employing casual staff to teach classes or ‘rewarding’ the best scholars by reassigning them from teaching to research duties (Smith and Smith, 2012). It also promotes the negative perception of teaching as a chore that must be done before the ‘truly important’ tasks can be undertaken.

Furthermore, certain practices pursued by universities, which are ostensibly aimed at raising the profile of teaching, have the opposite outcomes. These effects have been identified at universities where a full professorial teaching position was introduced (Macfarlane, 2011). This measure, intended to boost the status of teaching, proved to have an interesting, but unintended consequence. The idea of a ‘teaching professor’ is contrasted with a ‘research professor’ with the latter considered to be a ‘real’ professor (Macfarlane, 2011; Harwood, 2010). The most recent reform of Poland’s HE system, which came into force on 1 October 2018, introduced a similar division between the two university functions – teaching and research – with perceptibly greater importance attached to the latter.

The ideological roots of Poland’s reform

The authors of Polish Act 2.0 extensively drew on NPM philosophy. In fact, the reform, both in its programmatic and management aspects, was rooted in this approach. The former is reflected in emphasising the productivity of the research sector, the need to strengthen its capacity to secure funds from external sources and the perception that the legitimacy of public funding should be tied to parametrically evaluated research achievements. It also promotes solutions aimed at strengthening the cooperation between universities and their social and economic environment as well as introducing corporate governance solutions typical of market-based entities (e.g. councils) into the university’s institutional order. Its management aspect echoes the following NPM beliefs: strengthening the position of rectors as university community leaders while limiting the importance of collective bodies; adopting a parametric, mechanistic system for measuring the researchers’ performance; introducing vigorous internal competition for financial resources within the sector; promoting close association between funding and research deliverables; extending the autonomy of universities in terms of setting curricula and governance; strengthening the mechanisms of their accountability to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education; and emphasising the importance of international university rankings.

An analysis of the rationale behind Act 2.0 in light of certain trends of new institutionalism leads to interesting conclusions. First, it reveals that its authors assumed that changing the HE system requires a thorough revamping of its institutional order. Their assumption was likely based on the belief that institutions are sets of rules, models and procedures that favour calculations made by rational social actors (individual and collective ones) who seek to maximise their marginal utility. As a consequence of changes in the institutions, including the funding rules, actors within the system (university and its staff) will have to adapt to the new situation so as not to lose their existing position (or even strengthen it), and thus will focus on research activity (rewarded under the new rules).

Second, the reformers decided that a radical reconstruction of the institutional order of the science and HE sector can only be achieved through social engineering mechanisms. This involved a complex overhaul of the system according to a predetermined, detailed and ideologically driven plan. It was associated with a constructivist model of institutional change based on the belief that institutions are intentionally constructed and modified rules by social actors to achieve goals that they consider important (e.g. Knight and Sened, 1998; Streeck and Thelen, 2005). The rationally calculating individuals, driven by the desire to reap individual rewards, including economic ones, were expected to adapt to the new rules governing the system because they considered these rules to be more favourable than those previously in force (e.g. Levi, 1990).

Third, the reformers assumed that changes implemented in some other countries predominantly involved NPM instruments. Consequently, while searching for inspiration for the draft version of Act 2.0 as well as the rationale for its implementation, they appealed to experiences and successes (while ignoring the dysfunctionalities) of the countries reforming their own science and HE systems along these lines. In this case, the impact of institutional isomorphism can be clearly seen as a result of the desire to gain external legitimacy for the reform and to boost its credibility as a kind of modernisation effort pursued by many other countries (e.g. Croucher and Woelert, 2016; Marginson and Considine, 2000; Stensaker and Norgard, 2001). From this perspective, institutional change is primarily a process of encouraging desirable behaviours based on reflective or mechanical imitation, which leads to isomorphism, homogeneity and convergence with organisational cultures prevailing in the research and education sectors (e.g. DiMaggio and Powell, 1991; Scott, 1997).

Fourth, the reformers assumed that for Act 2.0 to succeed, they had to rally a group of active and influential ‘producers’ or ‘vehicles’ for the reform’s spirit in the process of consulting its principles, legislative work, as well as at its implementation stage. To this end, a series of impressive scientific congresses (each with over 500 participants) was convened. It consisted mostly of rectors of Poland’s largest universities and heads of national university organisations, including students’ unions, who saw Act 2.0 as a genuine opportunity for change in the HE sector in Poland, as well as the promise of benefits and prestige to the universities they represented. The Ministry of Science and Higher Education thus managed to create a strong advocacy coalition (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1993), whose prominent members supported its general provisions and proposed directions of action, even if their views on the details of the modifications proposed by Act 2.0 differed.

Fifth, it was thought that the circumstances favoured a radical change in the institutional order of the university sector. These circumstances resulted from a dozen or so years of incremental changes, which did not appreciably alter its operating logic but contributed to the generation of knowledge concerning effective and ineffective university modernisation strategies. This included disappointment with the position of Polish science on the academic map of the world, the belief that Polish science insufficiently contributes to domestic economic development, and the determination of the Minister of Science and Higher Education (Deputy Prime Minister) to modernise the system (Kwiek, 2017). The originators of the reform saw it as an opportunity to implement the concept of ‘broken balance’ to overcome path dependence, thanks to the emerging window of opportunity, which could lead to a reconfiguration of the institutional order in the university sector (e.g. Kingdon, 1995).

Models of adaptation of public economics universities to selected changes introduced under Act 2.0

We now explore the adaptation strategies devised by public economics universities in the face of two significant regulatory changes, with a focus on the mechanism mentioned in the ‘Introduction’. The first of these changes, preceding the adoption of Act 2.0, involves the modification of the funding algorithm (and its component – the so-called teaching availability indicator), while the other one concerns the establishment of a new career path for academic staff, the so-called teaching professorship. Looking at these changes in chronological order provides an in-depth understanding of the adaptation strategies adopted by the economics universities.

However, in order to make it easier for the reader to follow the reasoning and the ensuing conclusions, two issues will be discussed first: (1) the research methodology, including specific data collection procedures that led to the research findings, and (2) the specificity of Polish economics universities, so crucial for understanding their responses to the changes introduced by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

Research methodology

The findings discussed below are based on research carried out as part of a 2-year project titled, ‘The Ways of Adapting Economics Universities to Changes Caused by the Reform of the HE System in Poland (Act 2.0)’. The project established six inter-university teams (in the areas of research, education, cooperation with the business environment, university finance and organisation) responsible for investigating the situation in each area and formulating recommendations for specific solutions to be implemented by the universities.

In this study, we mostly rely on two kinds of data. The first one comprises the secondary data – statistics obtained directly from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education on first-year admissions to individual public economics universities. However, the discussion below is based primarily on the second kind of data, namely, information collected as part of an in-depth study conducted in the form of moderated group interviews (FGI – Focus Group Interview) with the participation of representatives of public economics universities.

Group discussion is not a typical interview technique in the case of respondents who are hard to reach (our interviewees represented this category) (cf. Bloor et al., 2002), but we decided to adopt it since it provided optimal conditions for the clash of opinions and comments made by different groups of interviewees. Moreover, this technique allowed us to moderate the interaction between the participants of the interview and thus obtain valuable extra information (Silverman, 2005).

Accordingly, two groups of respondents participated in the FGIs: (1) representatives of university management and (2) representatives of research and teaching staff from individual economics universities. At the outset, it was assumed that a proportionally larger number of rank-and-file employees would participate in the interviews (see Table 1). In the first stage, a group of representatives of public economics universities (the so-called primary group) was selected, who were expected to participate in subsequent discussions. This selection criterion was critical, given the research objective associated with monitoring the processes that occur during the implementation of specific provisions of the HE reform in Poland, which required a longitudinal approach to planning the data collection process. It should be noted that between 2017 and 2018, the most important decisions concerning the changes implemented by the ministry were negotiated; hence, the timing of the meetings permitted not only point-based evaluations but observations of the processes as they occurred.

Table 1.

Sample characteristics.

Month of interview	Type and number of interviewees	Number of primary group interviewees
December 2017	University managers and senior executives^a (5) Teaching/research staff (11) Men (11) Women (5)	Primary group (16 representatives of public economics universities)
February 2018	University managers and senior executives^a (4) Teaching/research staff (10) Men (10) Women (4)	Primary group (14 representatives of public economics universities) Supplementary group (0 representatives of public economics universities)
May 2018	University managers and senior executives^a (2) Teaching/research staff (8) Men (8) Women (2)	Primary group (8 representatives of public economics universities) Supplementary group (2 representatives of public economics universities)
June 2018	University managers and senior executives^a (1) Teaching/research staff (8) Men (8) Women (1)	Primary group (9 representatives of public economics universities) Supplementary group (0 representatives of public economics universities)
January 2019	University managers and senior executives^a (1) Teaching/research staff (8) Men (7) Women (2)	Primary group (7 representatives of public economics universities) Supplementary group (2 representatives of public economics universities)

Rectors, vice-rectors, chancellors and bursars from public universities of economics.

Only a portion of the primary group members took part in subsequent meetings. We were not surprised that the representatives of university management were the first to drop out of the study (see Table 1). To minimise the risk of bias associated with the decreasing number of interviewees, additional people were selected by representatives of individual economics universities. The substituted group (similar to the primary group) was chosen according to two criteria. The interview participants were expected to (1) be familiar with the provisions of Reform 2.0 and (2) be aware of the processes taking place at their university (e.g. the solutions implemented and the decisions made as a result of the reform). Assuming that the representatives of the primary group had the best knowledge of the above-mentioned criteria, recruitment via an intermediary strategy (cf. Bloor et al., 2002) was applied, and they were entrusted with the task of selecting participants for subsequent meetings. It was ensured that a representative of each of the public economics universities was present during the meeting, which allowed us to maintain continuity of observation. Sampling details are presented in Table 1.

Each time, the discussion was moderated by the same person (one of the authors of this article), and the included topics were structured within a flexible discussion guide (or interview scenario) that reflected the research questions. The participants were encouraged to speak openly and freely comment on other interlocutors’ views. The discussion usually started with general opening questions and then focused on specific issues related to the situation of economics universities and the implementation of changes in individual academic units. A single discussion session lasted from 120 to 190 minutes, and the conclusions were written down in the form of grids, with full anonymity of the respondents preserved.

In this article, we focus only on the issues associated with changes in the area of education at universities. The discussion also included other topics not analysed in this article, such as changes in the areas of science and research, cooperation with the environment, university finance and organisation.

The process of data analysis was divided into stages: (1) data preparation, (2) description of the observed phenomena and (3) the mechanisms and their explanations. In the third stage, new intentionalism theory was used to support the explanations.

Poland’s HE system – the unique features of public economics universities

A brief outline of Poland’s HE system with some remarks on the specific characteristics of public economics universities will help the reader follow the discussion below. The HE sector in Poland, which currently consists of about 400 institutions (around 1.3 million students), can be divided into several groups based on different sets of criteria. First, there are public (state-owned) institutions (financed mainly from the state budget) and non-public ones (funded primarily from non-budgetary resources). Second, there are HE institutions that have the right to confer doctoral degrees and those that do not.

Moreover, as provided by the legislation, these institutions may use different names (e.g. university, university of technology, academy) depending on the number of areas in which they can grant doctoral degrees. In practice, due to the relatively unconstrained authorisation process, a large proportion of HE institutions in Poland – regardless of their actual research and scientific achievements – are classified as university-type institutions. Furthermore, most of them at least formally engage in scientific research with varying success.

Act 2.0 is intended to make the division more clear-cut by establishing an additional criterion that identifies HE institutions as university-type or vocational, as well as more detailed categories (research universities, polytechnics, etc.), which is reflected by their scientific category awarded on the basis of parameterised results (which primarily reflect their research performance). These assumptions, however, are forward-looking in nature, and at present, the terminology used in the Polish academic sector only partially describes the actual dominant profile (research or teaching) of individual institutions. However, the reform, in line with international trends (Kwiek, 2017), provided a crucial impetus not only for a practical but also formal diversification of HE institutions in Poland, which will have significant organisational and financial consequences for these entities in the future.

Even though five public economics universities (in Krakow, Poznań, Wrocław, Katowice and SGH Warsaw School of Economics) comprise a group of research-oriented institutions, they have always been actively involved in teaching (about 5% of the total number of students in Poland study at these universities) along with transmission of entrepreneurial values (cf. Nowak, 2016; Pasierbek and Wach, 2016) and offered courses highly regarded on the labour market to large numbers of students. These universities, due to their attractive programmes, benefitted from the increasing educational aspirations of Poles after the political transformation in 1989 and performed a critical social function of providing a trained labour force. At the same time, these universities became victims of their success – their focus on massive teaching was associated with less involvement in research activities as compared to other universities (Czarnacka-Chrobot et al., 2018). Moreover, the degree of commitment of economics universities to research varies – the group comprises institutions that are very active in research and those that mainly teach, but both types have undisputable academic aspirations. Likewise, the institutions themselves employ some people with significant research production and those who do not publish at all. One of the FGI participants noted that ‘An internal evaluation carried out by my university in 2018 revealed, the scale of the problem – in one faculty up to 30% of staff employed in research positions had not published anything in the past two years’ (FGI interviewee).

This new reform of the HE system in Poland significantly changed the rules of the game. First, mass education ceased to be financially viable. Second, the financing of the university was more dependent on the research activity of each individual employee.

The new university funding algorithm versus the invasiveness and ostensible nature of NPM-inspired changes

In December 2016, in anticipation of Act 2.0, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education introduced a modified algorithm for the allocation of basic subsidies to academic institutions. These modifications predominantly consisted of tying the subsidy amount to the SSR (student–staff ratio) and changing the research categories held by individual universities (the previous funding algorithm, which did not penalise mass admissions, induced universities to regularly increase their first-year intakes). This subsidy constitutes the primary source of funding for public HE institutions, or about 60 percent of their total operating revenues (Lewicki, 2018). The ministry’s determination to institute changes is reflected in the fact that the regulation adopted in December 2016 applied to the distribution of subsidies in the following year (2017) – the mechanism was put in practice already 2 months after the new algorithm announcement.

The recommended number of students per employee in an academic institution was set at 13:1. The universities where the ratio exceeded this parameter suffered financial consequences, that is, they received less funding from the state budget. In order to reduce the disproportionate negative impact on the financial standing of these universities, the so-called backstop was introduced, which limited the decrease (and increase) of subsidies to 5 percent of the previous year’s budget in the first year in which the regulation applied (starting 1 January 2017).

At public economics universities, the actual SSR was close to 21:1 (at some institutions, it approached 30:1). One of the participants in the discussion rightly pointed out that ‘the effect or rather the penalty for such a high ratio [SSR] is the reduction of subsidies, which puts economic universities in a challenging position because this ratio is difficult to reduce in the short term’ (FGI interviewee). Therefore, it came as no surprise that they found themselves among the most adversely affected institutions in financial terms (losing 5% of subsidies year by year). Faced with the adverse financial consequences of the implemented solution, economics universities had three options: reduce the number of students admitted, increase staff employment, or negotiate with the Ministry to mitigate or eliminate the negative impacts of the change. Each of these actions was taken, but it appears that most institutions decided to significantly reduce first-year admissions (compare these in Chart 1).

Chart 1.

Number of first-year admissions to individual public economics universities.

In 2017 (the first year in which the modified algorithm was applied), economics universities were unable to restrict admissions for the 2016–2017 academic year. As a consequence, no actions to that effect were possible until the recruitment process for academic year 2017–2018 commenced. The result was quite substantial – in the first year after the introduction of the new algorithm, economics universities reduced their total intake by about 17 percent and made plans for similar cuts in subsequent years. An indirect way of reducing the number of students involved stricter enforcement of course regulations, which resulted in more dropouts. The scale of reductions introduced by universities varied and was correlated with their initial situation (i.e. the degree of variance between the actual SSR and the legislator’s stipulated value for 2017). Two universities took exceptionally drastic measures. In 2017, the Poznań University of Economics and Business decided to admit 25 percent fewer students than in the previous year, whereas the Cracow University of Economics reduced first-year admissions more gradually – first by 23 percent (in 2017), and then by 16 percent (in 2018).

The modified SSR anticipated the changes stipulated by Act 2.0 and sent a clear message to university authorities that the Ministry of Science and Higher Education was determined to proceed with a far-reaching reconstruction of the system, including the funding of Poland’s HE institutions through regulatory changes. Considering the theory of new institutionalism, the following elements of reasoning adopted by the creators of the new funding algorithm can be identified:

(a) the most effective mechanism for influencing the behaviour of entities in complex systems, such as the university sector, involves fiscal stimuli that compel them to rapidly adapt to the new principles of allocation of financial resources;

(b) rational actors, driven by the calculations of their own benefits and intending to achieve them, are determined to adapt quickly to the expectations of those who introduce the new rules on the distribution of funds;

(c) breaking away from deterministic path dependence and the unsatisfactory effects of the policy of incremental changes requires actions that are not only radical in scope but also highly dynamic and characterised by a short implementation timeframe;

(d) a robust regulatory policy resulting in substantial financial consequences will make universities aware of the determination of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education to introduce those changes, and will demonstrate the ministry’s approach to the process of designing and implementing Act 2.0;

(e) a belief that without quality research, the contribution of science to Poland’s economic development will continue to be limited. To avoid this, it is necessary to re-focus the activities of university staff from teaching to research by changing the funding method and promoting research more vigorously at the expense of teaching.

The implementation of the new university funding algorithm demonstrates how NPM and its attendant variants of managerialism lead to the professionalisation of management and the economisation of activities while posing some risks. In this case, the risks called ‘invasiveness’ and ‘ostensibility of responses’ appear to be particularly relevant. NPM, with its strong conceptual associations with the institutional aspects of public choice theory, exhibits a preference for hard parametric (regulatory and/or financial) mechanisms of institutional change (e.g. Marks, 1992; Milgrom and Roberts, 1992). It is perceived as a radical overhaul of institutional rules serving the interests of rationally calculating actors, supported by a high adaptation pressure. Accordingly, the actors, who subsist in asymmetrical relations, are forced to adapt to new rules of distribution of power and financial resources (e.g. Pfeffer and Salancik, 2003). Institutional invasiveness often leads to superficial institutional change – instead of a genuine change in the operating logic of the system and its actors, lip service and formal adjustments to the new institutional order prevail (e.g. DiMaggio and Powell, 1991).

The dominant position of NPM in the reform process means that in the name of obtaining external legitimacy (e.g. on the part of the ministry or agency that decides the financial policy in the sector), both individual and collective actors are aware of the limited effectiveness of the changes being introduced in achieving the expected strategic goals, yet the actors choose to implement them, because doing so facilitates access to financial resources. Such a response, known as instrumental adaptation (e.g. DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Streeck and Thelen, 2005), was observed in selected public economics universities. Consider, for example, the decisions taken at the university where the SSR was the least favourable. The new funding algorithm, originally intended to improve the quality of teaching, resulted in the following steps being taken (1) the number of first-year admissions was significantly reduced, (2) the workload for the teaching staff was increased and (3) the average size of seminar groups remained unchanged, which was only partially in line with the Ministry’s objectives. One of the participants in the discussion made a very apt comment:

The 13:1 benchmark was intended to promote the teaching quality by reducing the number of students per academic staff member. Yet given the low operating budgets of economics universities, this change undermines their financial stability, which in no way will improve quality. (FGI interviewee)

The mechanism was supposed to promote quality, but, due to its invasiveness (financial burden and lack of time to plan appropriate long-term actions), it produced only ostensible changes aimed to ensure the institution’s survival rather than modify its operation in the long run.

Our discussions with the representatives of economics universities also revealed that they interpreted the funding algorithm as a rather brutal herald of future changes. From now on, public economics universities (1) will operate under a permanent fear of financial instability and (2) as one of the participants in the discussion acutely observed, ‘will be afraid of being reduced to the level of vocational business schools’ (FGI interviewee). In principle, a single ministerial decision made the situation of economics universities or at least those that focused on mass education rather than on research, uncertain. This sense of precariousness caused by the invasiveness of the change seems to be an important contextual factor needed for the interpretation of decisions and actions taken by these institutions in the months immediately following the implementation of Act 2.0.

The teaching professorship as a new career path and the fragmentation and inconsistency of NPM-inspired activities

One of the solutions proposed under Act 2.0 is of particular interest because, given the avowed focus on raising the status of the teaching profession, it should, in principle, promote the quality of education. However, bearing in mind the unintended effects of the implementation of the SSR benchmark, one could expect that some public economics universities would use it for entirely different purposes than those envisaged by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. The origin of this development lies in the four risks inherent in reform efforts rooted in NPM, that is, (1) the invasiveness of the already introduced changes, (2) the concomitant ostensibility of actions taken by institutional actors, compounded by (3) the fragmentation of functions and (4) the inconsistency of the planned interventions.

Act 2.0 instituted a new academic career path apart from the research-oriented one – any person with considerable teaching or professional achievements can be employed as a university professor. Apparently, the originators of this idea believed that such a career path would contribute to improving the quality of education and boost the prestige of teaching at the university. It was envisaged that the process of teacher recruitment would be based on transparent principles, that teachers will be promoted within their selected path, and that they would have the opportunity to transfer from one path to another. It was anticipated that teachers would be evaluated according to principles like those applied to research and teaching-research staff. A significant weakness of the advocacy of the teaching path was the lack of its operationalisation and the very general nature of the submitted proposals, as was pointed out during the discussion:

Universities will introduce their own criteria for the transition to the teaching path and the requirements for promotion to university professorship, although unfortunately, there is no framework for these requirements, because the wording ‘significant achievements’ as used in Article 116.2.2 is notoriously vague. (FGI interviewee)

The lack of agreement on the overall concept of the teaching path resulted in full discretion being given to universities regarding their staffing policy. As a result, employees may declare whether they wish to follow the research, teaching-research, or exclusively teaching paths, and then have the opportunity to change paths following successive periodic evaluations (Górniak, 2017).

Understanding the rationale behind further decisions taken at the level of individual institutions is possible only in the light of the draft parametric evaluation principles proposed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, which will influence one of the most important components of the university funding algorithm, namely, the scientific category. A key provision was introduced to prevent situations in which a university scores high on the evaluation even though the research contributions of its staff members vary widely (i.e. a handful of individuals who publish a lot and are responsible for the academic standing of the entire university vs a multitude of unproductive researchers who benefit from the commitment of their colleagues). This provision stipulates that a maximum of four publication slots per employee should be included in the university achievement score. To simplify the explanation, but without going into the complex scoring and slot-filling mechanisms, let us assume that one slot equals one publication. Under such a system, the achievements of a given university – crucial for its evaluation scores – will depend on the contribution of each of its research employees. In addition, a special ‘penalty’ was introduced for employees who fail to fill their publication slots (these employees were ominously called ‘N-zeros’). More decisions and adaptation strategies of individual economics universities will likely result from the juxtaposition of the following factors: (1) regulations to be introduced in the area of research (including, in particular, the parameterisation principles), (2) regulations in the area of teaching, including dealing with the problem of promotion within the teaching path, and (3) the invasiveness of the changes implemented previously as well as their resultant institutional uncertainty and instability.

So far, however, the career and promotion path for faculty members has been applied as a tool for automatically improving the aggregated research performance indicators that are so important in the parameterisation process rather than as a quality-stimulating mechanism in the area of teaching. The responses of representatives of economics universities were dominated by a managerial approach and the desire to use the teaching path as a tool of human resources management rather than a quality-assurance mechanism. The main proposed criterion for shifting staff to this path was not so much high quality of their teaching as their unproductivity as researchers. During the discussion, it was noted that ‘research specialisation will put an end to the fiction of research ostensibly conducted by some employees who almost exclusively focus on teaching, while those involved in research will be relieved from other duties’, and ‘in many cases, making this kind of choice will be necessary given the new university funding system’ (FGI interviewee).

Through inducement and persuasion, some universities chose to reassign their insufficiently productive staff to the teaching path. Intra-institutional practices demonstrate how invasive the ministerial decision proved to be at the micro-level. For example, at one university, the head of a faculty department made a straightforward suggestion that all the academic employees who in recent years failed to fill at least a single slot with a publication in a scientific journal should be reassigned to teaching positions. In this way, some economics universities have reduced the negative consequences resulting from the paltry research output of their N-zero employees, thus yielding a positive impact on their evaluation scores. At the same time, however, the process will probably lower the quality of teaching and contribute to the erosion of the status of the teaching path, given the essentially negative rationale behind such a reallocation of employees. It is worth noting that representatives of economics universities were well-aware of this risk and in the discussion expressed their fear of ‘the teaching path being perceived as less attractive or prestigious’ (FGI interviewee).

In the approach proposed by the Ministry, one can detect the risks inherent in reforming the science and HE system in line with the NPM philosophy, such as a fragmented perception of reality and inconsistency of actions concurrently carried out at the level of various subsystems. The fragmented comprehension of complex social systems, including that of HE, which is characteristic of the managerial approach, leads to significant problems with understanding the logic of their operation (e.g. Norman and Gregory, 2003; Pollitt, 2008). For this reason, changes in these systems tend to be made in a way that is determined by thinking in terms of the logic of the system’s components rather than the logic of the system as a whole. This leads to the paradoxical situation of suboptimisation in which seemingly rational institutional changes to a particular subsystem bring about the anticipated changes within the subsystem itself, but at the same time, they interact with interventions implemented in other subsystems, reducing the effectiveness of all the interventions or even reversing their effects. In the case under discussion, a solution aimed at improving the quality of teaching and raising the profile of academic teachers, implemented without considering the changes made in other subsystems (especially in research), will likely generate effects incompatible with the intended ones.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed specific strategies applied by Poland’s public economics universities to adapt to changes imposed by the HE system reform based on NPM philosophy. Our particular interest was the discrepancy between what these universities actually do and the reformers’ expectations, as well as the contextual features that encourage such variance. Based on qualitative data along with the theoretical framework proposed by the new institutionalism, we identified four risks resulting from the adoption of NPM principles by the reformers and combined them into a cause–effect sequence, that is, (1) the invasiveness of the proposed changes puts the affected institutions in an uncertain position, while (2) the fragmented perception of the science and HE system at the reform planning stage and (3) the inconsistency of actions taken lead to (4) instrumental adaptation measures applied by these institutions (and ostensible institutional change).

The invasiveness of the introduced solutions, especially concerning the hastily implemented new university funding model typically associated with the parametrised evaluation of individuals, gives rise to a sense of uncertainty among public economics universities, which leads to a heated debate on their role in the system of science and HE. The strategies chosen by universities were also influenced by the fragmentation of the reform process and inconsistency of actions undertaken in this area, that is, planning interventions concerning research and academic education without taking into account the links among the individual sub-areas. A clear example of this is the so-called teaching path introduced as a consequence of the adoption of Act 2.0. It was initially intended to improve the quality of teaching but is often used as a convenient exclusion formula that discriminates against employees whose lesser scientific achievements may adversely affect the evaluation of research conducted by universities.

As a result, the processes of changes at economics universities to adapt to the requirements of Act 2.0 may produce effects not intended by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (e.g. the above-mentioned teaching path). There is a lot to suggest that at the first phase of Act 2.0 implementation, public economics universities in Poland tend to instrumentally adapt to the changes imposed by the reform of the science and HE system, enabling them to quickly implement the new parametric rules, which rewards them with a higher proportion of public funds. The high dynamics of institutional changes, their far-reaching nature and the associated intense financial pressure cause public economics universities to adopt a short-term perspective, which is evidenced by their rapid, yet formal, adjustment to the new institutional rules.

The processes described in this article and the reforms of HE in Poland should be of interest to the international community of HE researchers for several reasons. First, Poland currently has the fifth largest system of HE in the European Union, and it has been subjected to intense pressures associated with reforms in the spirit of NPM (Kwiek, 2015). Hence, any significant changes occurring locally may have consequences for the entire European Higher Education Area. Second, Poland is perceived by Central European (CE) countries as a regional leader. Therefore, public policies implemented in Poland are also closely watched by other CE countries. Reform 2.0 may thus indirectly affect public policies implemented throughout the region. As suggested by Kwiek (2015: 77), among others, Poland’s HE system, with its history and problems, may be viewed as a model of other HE systems in Central Europe. However, this model is only an approximation, since it tends to highlight similar problems characteristic of post-communist systems rather than a general organisational affinity of HE sector in Central and Eastern Europe (Scott, 2011). The case of Polish economics universities may provide useful knowledge for architects of university reforms in other countries that intend to introduce radical market-oriented changes. This knowledge may constitute a valuable basis for reflection on solutions, both those that can be described as the ‘best practices’ and those that definitely are considered among the ‘worst practices’.

Third, and most interesting from the research point of view, it seems that particular mechanisms observed in public economics universities also appeared in other types of academic institutions. The process observed seems to have universal features (this was pointed out, among others, by FGI participants) both in the institutional context (includes various types of institutions) and in the regional context (refers to various education systems in which NPM-based reforms were implemented). Therefore, it seems that some general rules can be derived from the observation. This is confirmed by the conclusions of other researchers – these patterns of behaviour of institutions under pressure from NPM-inspired reforms are widely described in the literature. They include such phenomena as ostensible adaptation, ‘the game of excellence’, or substantial research drift towards an instrumental approach to fulfilling the educational mission of the university (e.g. Alvesson and Spicer, 2016; Butler and Spoelstra, 2012; Rhodes, 2017; Springer and Clinton, 2017; Tourish et al., 2017).

Fourth, lessons from the reforms of economics universities in Poland are also valuable for accumulating knowledge about cause and effect relationships. This becomes particularly significant if one agrees that institutional reforms create the need for new changes rather than make them unnecessary (Maassen and Olsen, 2007; Olsen, 1998). Reform 2.0, which seems to be mostly a continuation of the reform undertaken in 2010, should be seen in this way. What distinguishes the latter from the former is its broader scope and its greater dynamics of change.

To conclude, the reform of the science and HE system in Poland is in its initial implementation stage. Consequently, our discussion is one of the first attempts to interpret and anticipate its direct and indirect effects. At the same time, as mentioned above, this reform may have global consequences. Hence, its fate and the ensuing changes definitely deserve further research and critical analysis. Since the reform is currently in progress, its programmatic structure, the adopted rules and tools of change, the manner of its implementation, and the responses of individual universities offer a fascinating field of research in the future. Here we have considered only a fraction of these changes, highlighting the adaptation strategies adopted by public economics universities, the rationale behind them, and the possible intended and unintended consequences of these processes.

Footnotes

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The publication is co-financed from the funds allocated by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland to the Cracow University of Economics in the framework of grants for maintaining research potential.

ORCID iD

Magdalena Jelonek

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