New structures to reform higher education in Central and Eastern Europe: the role of distance education

Abstract

Incl. bibl.

Part of a special issue on open and distance learning. The writer discusses the past, present, and future of higher education and the role of distance education in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In CEE, higher education systems are the product of similar structures inherited from the Communist period, with separate research academies and specialist teaching universities and colleges and Soviet tri-mode teaching methods--conventional full-time campus-based, part-time evening, and the consultation method of distance education. Higher education reforms in CEE countries after 1989 include legislation to provide universities with autonomy, democracy, and control of enrollments. The various reforms do little to further the development of distance education and at worst actually inhibit initiatives. However, PHARE, a multi-country project for cooperation in distance education, has resulted in the establishment of the basic elements of national structures for distance education. For the future, a new paradigm could involve flexible and mixed modes of higher and distance education that are capable of serving a diversity of students. [umi]