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Abstract
The paper links higher education reforms and welfare states reforms in postcommunist Central European countries. It links current higher education debates (and reform pressures) and public sector debates (and reform pressures), stressing the importance of communist-era legacies in both areas. It refers to existing typologies of both higher education governance and welfare state regimes and concludes that the lack of the inclusion of Central Europe in any of them is a serious theoretical drawback in comparative social research. The region should still, after more than two decades of transition and heavy international policy advising, be viewed as a "laboratory of social experimentation". It is still too risky to suggest generalizations about how Central European higher education and welfare systems fit existing typologies. Consequently, the "transition" period is by no means over: it is over in terms of politics and economics but not in terms of social arrangements. Both higher education and welfare states should be viewed as "work in progress": permanently under reform pressures, and with unclear future.

The author of the text is analysing the organizational patterns of the Polish higher education using international empirical data gathered in 11 countries of Europe (N = 17 212, projects of academic EUROAC and CAP academical staff research). His main research question reads as follows: in what extent does the theoretical model of the joint authority fit into the reality of Polish universities, examined on above 3700 Polish representatives of the academic staff? The reply is contextual and relative: we are presenting Polish universities in the context of universities functioning in 10 countries of Europe (Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Italy, Norway, Portugal and Great Britain). The emerging from the examinations conflict between the vision of a university seen by academic community (i.e. an institutional model of the "community of researchers", based on academic traditional values) and his vision shared by the community of reformers and political decision-makers (i.e. the instrumental model) has a fundamental meaning for the fate of the reforms of higher education in Poland. ; Tekst analizuje wzorce organizacyjne polskiego szkolnictwa wyższego wykorzystując międzynarodowe dane empiryczne zebrane w 11 krajach Europy (N = 17 212, projekty badania kadry akademickiej EUROAC i CAP). Jego główne pytanie badawcze brzmi: w jakim stopniu teoretyczny model kolegialności pasuje do rzeczywistości polskich uniwersytetów, przebadanej na próbie ponad 3 700 polskich reprezentantów kadry akademickiej? Odpowiedź jest kontekstualna i relatywna: pokazujemy polskie uniwersytety w kontekście uniwersytetów funkcjonujących w 10 krajach zachodniej Europy (Austria, Szwajcaria, Irlandia, Holandia, Niemcy, Finlandia, Włochy, Norwegia, Portugalia i Wielka Brytania). Wyłaniający się z badań konflikt między wizją uniwersytetu podzielaną przez wspólnotę akademicką (czyli instytucjonalistycznym modelem "wspólnoty badaczy", opartym na tradycyjnych wartościach akademickich) a jego wizją podzielaną przez wspólnotę reformatorów i decydentów politycznych (czyli modelem instrumentalnym) ma znaczenie fundamentalne dla losu reform szkolnictwa wyższego w Polsce.

The increasing complexity of the academic enterprise in Europe is due to several general factors: globalization and Europeanization, educational expansion and massification of higher education, the economic crisis, reform pressures in the public sector, growing pressures for accountability, and knowledge-driven economic competitiveness of nations and regions. Factors generating change in national higher education policies and in national higher education systems have been multilayered, interrelated and often common throughout the continent. Reforms increasingly, and throughout Europe, lead to further reforms rather than to reformed higher education systems. Higher education has changed substantially in most European economies in the last two or three decades but it is still expected by national and European-level policymakers to change even more. Universities, throughout two centuries of their modern history, change as their environments change, especially in connection with changes in the functioning of nation-states and various forms of welfare states. Different directions of current and projected academic restructuring in different national systems add to the complexity of the picture at a European level.

This paper is focused on the links between reform agendas and their rationales in higher education and in welfare state services across Europe. Lessons learnt from past and ongoing welfare state reforms can be useful in understanding ongoing and future higher education reforms. Research on reforming European welfare states is a missing context in research on reforming European universities. We intend to fill this gap and briefly explore possible links between these two largely isolated policy and research areas. European universities and European welfare states are closely linked today because they are heavily dependent on public funding – and the competition for public funding between the different claimants to it is on the rise. Reforms of both sectors are also closely linked to increasing intergenerational conflicts over public resources in aging societies, and pressures on both sectors are linked to the shrinking tax base, the power of the neoliberal ideology, and changing social attitudes to both welfare and universities. Problems of both sectors and solutions to them are increasingly being defined at a global level through transnational reform discourses.

For most countries it is safe to say that higher education (HE) is the segment of the education system which has changed the most over the past 50 years. Expansion, massification, greater female participation, privatization, the diversification of programmes, and more recently internationalization and globalization processes have radically transformed national HE systems. In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), these processes of change have not only been much more abrupt and fastpaced than in the West, but have also run parallel to all-embracing political, economic and social transformations and, in many cases, nation-building. HE policy-makers in the region have been forced to tackle essentially all contemporary challenges confronting western HE systems within a much tighter timeframe and under much greater political and economic strain. HE reform has run parallel to the democratization of political institutions, the introduction of capitalism and, more recently, European integration. To complicate matters, CEE universities simultaneously struggled with the restoration of university self-governance and autonomy, academic freedoms, and the renewal of the academic profession. In numerous cases, HE was also at the apex of complicated national language and identity issues. Due its turbulent history and present, CEE higher education displays a striking diversity, which reflect nations' diverging pre-communist and communist pathways as well as different contemporary sources of legitimacy. CEE is home to some of the most tradition-rich universities in Europe, including the Charles University of Prague (1348), Jagellionian University of Kraków (1364), University of Pécs (1367), and University of Vilnius (1578). Many others emerged during the era of nationalism and modernization in the eastern Slavic regions (e.g. the University of St. Petersburg, 1724; Lomonossov University, 1755). Nation building in the Balkans was also accompanied by the opening of numerous large universities in the 1800s (University of Belgrade, 1808; University of Iaşi, 1860; University of Bucharest, 1864; University of Sofia, 1888), many of which were inspired by Napoleonic notions of nationalism.

This study analyses how different types of system-level (or 'landscape') structural reforms in higher education have been designed and implemented in selected higher education systems. In the 12 case studies that form the core of the project, the researchers examine reforms aimed at:• Increasing horizontal differentiation between different types of higher education institutions (for example reforms to introduce or modify the role of universities of applied science);• Increasing vertical differentiation through increasing or decreasing positional or status differences between higher education institutions (for example, reforms aimed at concentrating research in a limited number of universities) and;• Changing institutional interrelationships between higher education institutions (for example, through mergers, the formation of associations of institutions).In each case, the researchers set out to understand the origins and objectives of the reforms examined, the why they were designed and implemented, the extent to which they achieved their objectives and the factors affecting success or failure. The overall objective is to provide policy makers at the European, national and institutional levels with policy relevant conclusions concerning the design, implementation and evaluation of structural reforms

First paragraph: With a view to meeting the demands of the knowledge economy and taking up a leading role in its further development, Europe and its member states are urging universities and institutions for higher education more generally to innovate and modernise themselves. Organisational structures, governance and management systems, curricula and teaching methods, and funding and incentives mechanisms are no longer considered to be adequate to guarantee that European universities can keep up with global competition in education, research and innovation. Innovation and modernisation are also considered to be necessary with regard to the public (i.e. social, cultural and political) role of universities. Today's knowledge-intensive economies and societies are regarded as in need of up-to-date policies on equal opportunities, participation and access, and of strategies for knowledge-driven local and regional economic, social and cultural development. In addition to this and based on a concern about European citizenship, democratic involvement and social cohesion, there is a requirement for the development of curricula, extra-curricular activities and participation structures that offer students opportunities to develop civic competencies.