This paper approaches private provision of pre-university education in Romania, exploring available data on the sector's size and main characteristics and evaluating the extent to which the current regulatory framework enables positive effects in terms of freedom of choice, quality, equity, and social cohesion. The paper argues that the lack…

This paper presents findings about factors parents consider when choosing schools in the new educational market in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The economic and political chaos of the early independence period led to greater differentiation between public schools. Policies were enacted that encouraged the growth of private schools and fee-charging…

This qualitative multisite case study contextualized in the political economy of Ukraine examines orphanage youth's conceptualization of the role of vocational and higher education in the neoliberal era and highlights educational transformations in Ukraine. Drawing on Bourdieu's forms of capital (cultural, social, and economic), this…

Kyrgyzstan's relative openness to a diversity of ideas, combined with its poverty, has caused it to accept a plethora of international academic institutions and programs, often exported by the sender rather than imported at Kyrgyzstan's request. These institutions suggest a variety of visions of Kyrgyzstan's future and of the political and…

This article presents a comparative-historical analysis of access to higher education in Georgia. It describes the workings of corrupt channels during the Soviet and early post-Soviet periods and the role of standardized tests in fighting corruption in higher education admission processes after introduction of the Unified National Entrance…

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia, Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries have engaged in education reforms based on international frameworks. One of these, the Child-Friendly Schools (CFS) approach, is distinctively grounded in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). CFS standards are comprehensive,…

This paper describes the development of the Bologna process in Romania. The historical context covers the last years of the communist regime through 1989. From 1990 free elections of university leadership, the foundation of private universities and new democratic legislation, and projects for reforming higher education funded by different sources…

The article analyzes the last two decades of higher education reforms in Slovenia. During the "period of transition," they were led by national as well as international initiatives. At an early stage, the national initiatives were mainly based on criticisms of the last reform made by the former regime, although the generation of new ideas and…

Although informal payments are necessary for education systems in many countries, they prohibit education accessibility and equity in Eastern Europe and neighboring states. Exploring the rationales and the relationships is a promising approach for understanding corruption in education and ensuring educational equity. In this article, rationales…

This study examines the strategies that Russian private colleges and universities use to navigate the legal and normative pressures of the state in the free market of educational services. The tension between state control and free enterprise is analyzed through the prism of legitimacy as it is produced and maintained by the system of quality…

Prior to 1991, all higher education institutions in the Soviet Union were state institutions. There were some 900 higher educational institutions in 1990, including only 70 major universities, still referred to as VUZy, from the Russian "vysshee uchebnoe zavedenie". This acronym is popularly used to refer to all types of higher education…

Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) is seen as an intriguing case. Often described as a "miniature" of the Balkans due to its demographic pattern, the country has been exposed to a number of dramatic events during the past fifteen years. Today, international actors administer it as a sort of "semi-protectorate" concept, the definition of which is unclear…

In Dutch primary schools, Islamic religious education is presented in three ways. First, in public schools, parents may ask the municipality to create a facility for religious education (to be given by a local imam, for example) on school premises. Municipalities may also subsidize the teacher's salary. Islamic religious education (up to three…

This article discusses social issues in the Bologna process and who benefits from these social issues. The Bologna Declaration did not come out of the blue. It was preceded by the 1998 Sorbonne Declaration, which in turn built on the 1997 Lisbon Recognition Convention. Rather than discussing recognition of exams and degrees, the author takes the…

Ten years after the first global rankings appeared, it is clear that they have had an extraordinary impact on higher education. While there are fundamental questions about whether rankings measure either quality or what's meaningful, they have succeeded in exposing higher education to international comparison. More so, because of the…