Legislation for Higher Education in Balkan Countries

I. The Bulgarian Academic Community in the Society: glorious past and disputable present-day status

Every work in the field of the role of universities in the transformation of society encounters repeatedly questions like: “What is transformation? What is transition? What is society? What is community? What is the academic community and what should be its role for the change of society? Is the academic community the leading and the leader among the other communities in the transformation of society, or vice versa, it is being lead by the radical changes and developments in the bigger societal system? How should we think about communities and their role in the greater societal system at all? How do society and the academic community interact?” In respect of my country these questions could be further reinforced by adding to them another cluster of questions: “Is there an academic community at all as an important social actor (or ‘player’ as Voldemar Tomusk prefers) in the bigger societal system? Does it interact with the societal frame? Does it interfere in the considerable societal processes? What are its interrelations with the other social ‘players’?”

Since this project is meant to have more practical recommendations than theoretical speculations, I will confine myself here with several “work” definitions and theses. Let’s assume and take as first the most human and the largest in volume definition, that the society consists of all individuals, who inhabit the territory of a given state and who have reached maturity. Another possible “working” definition could be that in the countries with representative democracy, the society is formed by all citizens (in the republican states, or respectively subjects in the constitutional monarchies) of a given country, who have the right to vote and thus to influence the course of the political development in this particular country. Of course, the majority of the modern sociological approaches in the XXth century confirmed another understanding, according to which the society is a net of various in size and character communities, in which the people organize their work, activities, private lives, entertainment, amusements etc. This third definition (or implicit understanding) is tacitly assumed as the underlining basis of many specialized research-papers. It is the general assumption of mine as well. In the societal net there are many communities, which differ in size, scope, orientation, nature, goals and types of activities, practiced by the individuals, participating (or included) in them. The academic community should be one of the most important communities in all countries all over the world, and especially in the countries in transition.

Evidently, whoever claims that university community should be autonomous and govern itself, in claiming so implies that it is something able to govern itself. What is that something? A living organism or a collective subject? What is a collective subject? When does a group of people become a collective subject of self-government? When does a group of people become a community? Why do they say that the musicians playing in an orchestra form a community, while the clerks in a bank or an office do not?

The numerous answers to the question “What is a community?” have been expanded upon and all their consequences and implications investigated. A good many ethical and political tracts have sprung from them: from the Aristotle’s “Politics” and “The Nicomachean Ethics”^¹, to “A Theory of Justice” and “Political Liberalism” by John Rawls^² and “After Virtue” by Alasdair MacIntyre^³. The Aristotelian definition of a “man” is well known: a political (living) being, which can only exist in politeia, in a community and/or society (for example, women in Aristotelian times were part of the family community, but not of the politeia community). Outside the community and the society could only live gods and animals. Aristotle begins his tract “Politics” by reflecting on the nature of the first original micro-community – the family. Later theoreticians speak of other communities – religious congregations, professional guilds and democratic politeias, in other words, communities that rank highest in different society varieties. In German language theoretical literature a lot has been written about the differences and even antinomies between Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft – community and society. The English language literature abounds in different concepts, used by liberalists to substantiate the tension between community and the individual rights of those included in it, while the so-called “communitarists” – the theoreticians of community (from Latin – communitas) – prove that, on the contrary, a community is not always unliberal and does not necessarily suppress the individuality, the motives, values, preferences and motivations of those constituting it. The transpositions of these politological theories in the philosophy and sociology of education were not delayed^⁴.

The investigation of all these questions in depth requires a whole tract. I am going to limit myself to some inevitable questions, that have to be answered since I undertake to claim that the university is a community, which can and must govern itself.

In his “Politics”, Aristotle frequently says that people unite in communities because of their common aim not simply somehow to survive and subsist (which is also the instinctive aim of animals, living in herds, packs, flocks, swarms, etc.), but because it is human to strive to live well. Our contemporary John Rawls provides another suitable working definition that might be used as a starting point: “By definition, let’s think of a community as a special kind of association, one united by a comprehensive doctrine, for example, a church. The members of other associations often have shared ends but these do not make up a comprehensive doctrine and may even be purely instrumental”^⁵. It is evident that this definition views community on a maximalist scale: the presence of a comprehensive doctrine and common ends. The university community is not always up to this maximalist view. Religious universities and schools, for example, have their own, shared by all – lecturers, employees, students, parents and pupils – weltanschaunliche and religious foundation. With secular schools and universities the situation is obviously different. The worldviews, religions (or atheism), political and other convictions of the students and lecturers in secular universities are different. In this sense, they fall short of the maximalist conception of community as something constituted by individuals, sharing one and the same comprehensive doctrine. And yet they are communities, at least in the minimalist sense of Rawls’s definition: in spite of not forming a philosophical, political and religious community, university lecturers, students and employees constitute a community by means of their shared ends and motives. It is true that sometimes this minimalism minimizes even further. We cannot say, for example, that in Sofia University everyone shares the conviction that truth, knowledge and cognition are values in themselves quite independently from any use whatsoever. It cannot be also said that in Oxford today they all share the conviction, which became the motto of their university centuries ago: Dominus illuminatio mea – God is my enlightenment. We can be sure however, that almost everyone subscribes to the “purely instrumental ends”, as Rawls terms them: for students – to learn so as to succeed; that is, to get educated in order to obtain a diploma and later earn their living with it; for lecturers – to teach and research so as to make a living. It is clear, that for the different participants in a secular university community the motivation and the “ultimate end” of knowledge (a concept of both Aristotle and Rawls) are different. It is certain however, that even in its most minimized concept the university is a community in which separate individuals participate because of their striving for knowledge, higher than the secondary and common one.

The other above-mentioned contemporary of ours, Alasdair MacIntyre, reminds us that it is very important ”to consider what would be involved in any age in founding a community to achieve a common project, to bring about some good recognized as their shared good by all those engaging in the project. As modern examples of such a project we might consider the founding and carrying forward of a school, a hospital or an art gallery; in ancient world the characteristic examples would have been those of a religious cult or of an expedition of a city. Those who participated in such a project would need to develop two quite different types of evaluative practice. On the one hand they would need to value – to praise as excellences – those qualities of mind and character which would contribute to the realization of their common good or goods. That is, they would need to recognize a certain set of qualities as virtues and the corresponding set of defects as vices. They would also need however to identify certain types of action as the doing or the production of harm of such an order that they destroy the bonds of community in such a way as to render the doing or achieving of good impossible in some respect at least for some time. “^⁶

Once again, I will have to take a minimalist course and leave out talking about virtues – “those qualities of mind and character that would contribute to the realization of their common good or goods”. In a while, the reason will become clear. I will proceed with the second – identifying those types of action (or inaction) which “produce harm of such an order” that they not only “destroy the bonds of community”, but leave academic community entirely out of the question.

Let us compare: In the Declaration of academic freedom and autonomy of higher education institutions, passed in Lima in October 1988 (on the occasion of the 40^th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), the definitions of the concepts “academic liberty”, “academic community” and “autonomy” follow immediately after the preamble and the outline of the objectives. Here is the definition of an “academic community”: “it includes everyone who teaches, studies, carries out research and works in a higher educational institution.” Our present HEA contains an entire chapter - Chapter Six (from art. 48 to art. 59), entitled “Academic staff of higher schools”. Thus, the Act itself makes it clear that, in our case, it is legislatively inconceivable for the academic staff to become a university community. On the contrary – we are a mechanical set of individuals who simply share common object of activity.

It is not only that the Act speaks of “academic staff” instead of “academic community”. Another great problem in the way of transformation of staffs into communities is the present prescription for universities to be run by a limited number of people, occupying key elective posts with four-year terms of office, usually renewed. Thus it is often the case to have eight-year long rule of the same person – a dean, rector or the like.

We must at all costs remember that the pre-socialist tradition of SU was entirely different: the terms of office for all elective administrative posts used to continue a year only. The main consideration was that the less engaged scientists are in administrative chores, the more they can devote themselves to teaching and science. And also, the shorter are the terms of office, the greater number of academics can take actual part in the self-government of university community. Besides, there was very often a fruitful division and collective exercise of power. For example, the rector’s elections in SU in the period from 1904 to 1948 were held in June, at the end of each academic year. The new rector used to take over the post ten days before the beginning of the new academic year, but was officially introduced and installed in office on 25 November. The term of office lasted a year, and the rector used to share his responsibilities with the former rector (mainly in summer and during the winter semester), as well as with the rector to succeed him (mainly during the summer semester). The prospective rector was very often notified in advance, because Faculties used to take turns in putting up a candidate. Actually, the result was rector’s triumvirate, or passing on the baton of university administration.

Not only were the rector’s and the dean’s terms of office one year long, but our predecessors in Sofia University also observed a pan- European university practice: the rotational principle of administration and the consecutive representation of different university groups in it, that is, election of rectors from different faculties in succession. In case of sickness, long absence abroad and other emergency circumstances the faculty whose turn it was to rule, put up a new rector or vice-rector. Obviously, precisely this model with precisely the same two principles (1. short terms of office; and 2. successive, rotational representation of all groups) underlies all European Council institutions at present. In all of them the different heads rule from six months up to a year and the member-states representatives succeed each other.

By the way, it will be useful to remind that this model was not devised by today clerks in Brussels. Simply the most far-sighted European politicians^⁷ have finally grasped the lessons of history and history of philosophy, political science, sociology and of theory of government, and have convinced the present bureaucracy and administration that these are the sole mechanisms for just and equal self-government of a big community, constituted from different groups of people.

More than 2000 years ago, the philosopher provided the theoretical reasoning of this model. In his “Politics” he wrote: “Thus in all political governments which are established to preserve and defend the equality of citizens it is held right to rule by turns Formerly, as was natural, every one expected that each of his fellow-citizens should in his turn serve the public, and thus administer to his private good, as he himself when in office had done for others, but now every one is desirous of being continually in power, that he may enjoy the advantage which he makes of public business and being in office…”^⁸

It is even more important to remind, that if multinational European institutions managed to learn their lesson from history and the “wisdom of centuries” only at the end of the nightmarish 20th century, in university communities these lessons have been taken into consideration and have determined the organization of university communitas life. In some centuries-old universities these traditions have not only been preserved till present days, but keep thriving on and on. The yearly catalogue of Oxford university, for example, makes it clear that the people taking decisions and running the university are a few hundred, their names taking up at least 50 – 60 pages of the catalogue. It announces not only the members of the renowned Hebdomadal Council, who elected them and which group does each member represent, but also all kinds of commissions together with their members: commissions on salaries, commissions on students in difficult circumstances, commissions on retired lecturers, commissions on settling disputes and administrative appeals, endowment funds, executive boards, foundations, consultative councils, councils on maintaining and supplying libraries, councils on the maintenance of educational museums, commissions on visiting lecturers, councils on post graduate and Ph.D. degrees, and so on and so forth. Sofia University, constituting a university politeia of thirty thousand, is run not by a few hundred but by no more than thirty people – the rector and the vice-rectors, the deans, who are mostly members of the Academic Council, and the Academic Council itself. And when an academic community of thirty thousand is run by thirty people in the course of four years, we have the classical paradigm of university aristocracy, which very often degenerates into a paradigm of oligarchy. (It is particularly easy for a faculty oligarchy, for example, to turn into a shadowy economic subject.) What is even worse is that these thirty people hold more than one post and run several divisions. Why, for example, the Rector headed the Socrates programme in our university, and the vice-rector became its coordinator? It is true that the Regulations of Sofia university stipulate de jure, that collective consultative bodies are superior to separate individuals (The General Assembly of the University and the Academic Council are above the Rector, the Faculty Councils and the General Faculty Assemblies are above the Deans, Department meetings are above the personal decisions of Heads of Departments). However, anyone who is acquainted with the ways of both the General Assembly of the University and the General Assemblies of the separate Faculties, knows perfectly well that they are either not summoned more than once every four years, or, even if they are, they do not discuss anything or take any decisions together. The “consultativeness” and the collective taking of decisions, beneficial to the common good, as Aristotle has it, (or using the more modern jargon of Habermas, “the deliberative procedures”, determining publicity), are de facto absent in our case. They are formally present in the Regulations of our University, but are missing in the reality of our academic life.

Hence, in case some day our University lays claim to be autonomous, it will have to prove that it can be autonomous and self-governing, and can organize hundreds of people in the discussions and decision-making: in the smallest communities of the Departments, in the larger ones of the Faculties, as well as in the university politeia or communitas itself. The Regulations now in force render this impossible. When 30 thousand people are being ruled by one and the same thirty-strong oligarchy, even if it includes the most prominent academic authorities possessing the most versatile talents and artistic endowments, this will inevitably turn the 30 thousand-strong “mass” in an enormous passive multitude of disinterested, discontented and grumbling “subjects”. With different regulations of the academic game the disinterested begin to get interested because they know, that it is up to their Department who will be the next Dean the following year, and that it depends on their Faculty who will be the Rector in two years time. Discontent and grumbling will probably diminish then, because, even in quantitative terms, with shorter terms of office, division of power and with a rotation principle, the active administrators and decision-making persons in the academic community are hundreds of times more than now. When the passive subordinates are much fewer, it is not only common knowledge that power rights are delegated each year to ever new persons, but also that the ends and values common to all in the university home are further defined and corroborated anew every year… The shorter terms of office, the division of responsibilities and the principle of taking turns make the people in a university community much more involved in common causes and problems. In such a situation any long-serving lecturer is aware that at least once they will be in charge of something important for a year, and they will not be able to excuse themselves by saying that “nothing depended on them personally”, and “those up there” ordered as they liked. With the present regulations we have no choice but to grumble and murmur (which almost all university “atoms” do at the moment) at the oligarchies running the same faculty or the University as a whole. Of course, there are also some exceptionally rare attempts at a change, which in this “community” are bound to be qualified as demonic and/or diagnosed as lunatic, and consequently lead to excommunication.

In the end, let me once again repeat that these are not simply conclusions drawn from the abstract reflections of famous thinkers such as Aristotle and Rawls, MacIntyre and Habermas, nor the fancies of a university utopist, but a reminder of what is the situation in other countries at present, and what used to be the situation in our Sofia University as well. Up till 1948, of course…

If at the beginning of the new century and millenium some Bulgarian university at last aspires to restore the better of the two traditions in our higher education, it will thereupon have to remember some important responsibilities to society:

State bureaucracy is not and cannot be the society. It is a function of each executive authority, which pretends to back higher education as its benefactor and patron, guided by the lofty spiritual considerations of the value of knowledge. But the real situation is different. The state is a client of universities. It allocates (miserable) funds from the state budget not out of charity, but simply because this is the only way to provide itself with the jurists, teachers, doctors, engineers and other specialists, necessary for the future. The state simply pays in advance, and the less it pays, the poorer the quality of the goods it receives later. In fact, the state is a client of private universities as well, because those graduating them, even those working for private businesses and institutions, add to the exchequer and increase the Gross domestic product by means of the taxes they pay and the work they do.

Since 1948 the situation has changed. Bulgarian universities have been moulded after the structure of communist parties, which implied introducing the four-year terms of office in administration that can be renewed twice, or even thrice; abandoning the principle to appoint faculty deans from the different departments in turn, as well as the principle of “rotation” of the faculties when appointing the Rector; establishing the practice of token, much too general and unverifiable accountability on the part of faculty and university “congresses”, held every four years, in stead of at least yearly.

A year and a half ago I came across the University Annual, and - lo and behold – the Official section for the 1988/89 academic year was restored! That was the time of the official centenary celebrations in Sofia University, when it received a lot of state and foreign donations, subsidies and gifts. With trembling hands and a fluttering heart I opened the Official section, but… it carried the official speeches of the then rector Prof. Mincho Semov, as well as some regulations and provisions. So, we have restored the tradition to publish the Official section yearly, but without any detailed financial information in it… Well, don’t you call this a mockery of tradition? And all this happening in the Internet era, when the minutes of department, faculty and the academic council meetings could be announced in sufficient detail…

This conceptual couple is of great importance for all social, political and economic studies, dealing with the transition process in many countries in many different regions of the world.

Let me begin with some philosophical and linguistic remarks. ‘Transformation’ is a stronger concept than ‘transition’, because it implies the change of the form, i. e. the change of the essence of something. When we speak of ‘transformation’ we (should) imply the substantial change of an entity, which at the end of the process leads to an entirely new entity. When we (or at lest I) speak of ‘transition’, we speak not of change in the broadest sense of the word. ‘Transition’ and its Latin root reminds us of the notion of ‘movement’, and movement is only one of the species of change as a generic concept. The rest are the qualitative, the quantitative change, the change of ‘the what’, conceived as the appearance and the disappearance of a given thing. The word ‘transition’ implies space-change and/or locomotion; it implies that something is simply moving from one place to another remaining self-identical.

Nevertheless, I shall not exclude the notion and the word ‘transition’ mercilessly out of my analyses. On the contrary. If we take it seriously (as many ordinary people, journalists and even scholars do) we should be lead to the inevitable and reasonable questions: whence and where to are moving our societies and our universities? Whence and where are moving the CEE countries? Is the movement of the Balkan, former socialist countries comparable to the movement of the Visegrad Four? If we say that they both are ‘travelling’ from socialism or communism to capitalism, we will immediately encounter the question “Are socialism and capitalism self-existing entities that can be taken for granted, with self-evident peculiarities or not?”

Here we come to one of the crucial points not only of my modest work. Let’s enumerate several facets and criteria, according to which we will describe the ‘movement’ of our former socialist societies. The more exhaustive is this list, the more determinate will be the final results.

Let’s begin with these opinions, that were spread mostly in the beginning of the transition process in the beginning of the ‘90-ties in the former socialist countries.

The question ‘from where to where’ in the beginning of the transition received at least several definite answers with respect to the Central- and East European countries:

*We are ‘travelling’ from planned economy to market economy. This was one of the most evident and plain features of the economic aspect of the ‘transition’. Now, almost thirteen years after the beginning Bulgaria still does not received recognition from the EU as a country with really functioning market economy;

* We are ‘travelling’ from a state, where the only existing Party is omnipresent and omnipotent, to a pluralist society, where different parties, expressing different interests of different groups and members of the society, regularly compete (through the election system) for the executive and legislative power. This was one of the indisputable features of the political aspect of the transition in the beginning of the process.

*We are ‘travelling’ from a state, where the basic human and civic rights had been crudely violated to a state where they are declared to be a fundamental norm (although still the respect and the guarantees for some of these human and civic rights is more desirable than real practice).

*We are ‘travelling’ from a state, where the equality of all is triumphantly declared but the real social strata are existing and formed by the criteria: 1) are you a member of the Party or not (it is the largest dichotomy); and 2) on what level exactly of the Party’s hierarchy is one (i. e. what is the position a Party-member occupies in the scale of the so-called Party’s nomenclature). The access and the real fulfillment of all kinds of rights were dependent in a geometric proportion from (1) and (2).

*We are ‘travelling’ from the socialist undemocratic totalitarian state (that is the state empowering the only existing Party with boundless prerogatives in all economic, political and social spheres of human life; in the totality of human and social life) to the more democratic social settlement in the transition period and the really democratic state (that is the state with a real participatory representative democracy, which etymologically means ‘power of the people’)… in some future (utopian?) moment.

*In the international relations’ and military orientation we (the majority of the former socialist countries, but not all) are ‘travelling’ from the belonging to the Soviet empire, which satellites we were in all political, economic and social aspects of our public life, to the constellation of the economically developed Western countries with stabilized democratic systems.

The university intellectuals in Bulgaria played a decisive role in the persuasion of society in the valuability of these ‘directions of the movement’ in all these thirteen years. It is indisputable. Indeed, there were many, who tried to convince the society that these directions of the movement are positive and they are the proper ones. There were others, who argued and opposed the blind believe in the unquestionability of the ‘directions’. There were even some, who tried to defend the socialist past and its underlying philosophy and ideology. So, roughly speaking we may see at least three different approaches to the ‘transition’ here: leftist, rightist and liberal-centrist. Of course, this is a simplification, but still, there are many grounds for such a classification on a political basis. Alas, on a political basis. These three approaches might be seen, for example, in the books of four very popular Bulgarian scholars and intellectuals, who actively participate in the public life. The first of them is Eugene Daynov’s “The Political Debate and the Transition in Bulgaria”, (S., 2000, Foundation Bulgarian science and culture, 711 pp.) He is the Bulgarian champion of the rightist neo-Aristotelian political science and political history. The second type is personalized by Roumen Dimitrov with his “Tribunal or Forum. Considerations and Essays.”(George NAEF Ed., Geneva-Paris-Sofia, 1992, 253 pp.) and by Roumen Daskalov, who is the author of “The Things around Us. Observations and Ruminations on the Changes”, (S., LIK, 1998. 279 pp.) and “From Here and There” (S., LIK, 2000, 221 pp.) For me they are the best example for liberal intellectuals in our country. The third approach is seen in the book by Dimitar Denkov “The 17^th of June of Simeon Saxe-Koburg-and-Gotta. The Intrusive Absence of an Aura”. (S., Zahariy Stoyanov, 2002, 215 pp.). Dimitar Denkov is one of the most passionate defenders of the Marxist and Leninist philosophy and of the political programme of the BSP.

To be fair, our university intellectuals had done at least this work properly in the first dozen of years in the transition period. They succeeded to convince the Bulgarian society that the political and the economic patterns of the totalitarian past have to be overthrown and something new has to be built.

Now, twelve years after the beginning of the transition process we may identify what has been undeniably achieved and what is still ahead of us.

First of all, with respect to all Balkan transition countries we may generalize that the first dozen of years of the ‘movement to the different’ was a period of many political and economic upheavals, dramatic changes, inter-ethnic catastrophes, wars, bloodshed and all kind of disasters.

Secondly, another remark seems also inevitable. The transition processes especially in the Balkan countries turned out to be extremely complicated and complex. Maybe some of us (like me) were to naпve and even stupid, when ten or twelve years ago unduly expected that after the positive changes in the political sphere and the appearance of the pluralistic party-system, everything else would evolve almost automatically, spontaneously and ‘progressively’. Now, twelve years after the beginning it is evident, that the transition process with all its facets will be much longer and will last at least three more decades. Also, it is evident that the flow of time is irreversible, but the transition is not irreversible. On the contrary, there are many events and tendencies in some of our countries, which allow us to speak of certain backward developments. For instance, the rise of nostalgia in some strata of the population for the socialist past; the disappointment in the political system and the existing political parties; the demand, expressed by certain political formations for a revision of the privatization process etc.

Thirdly, the extreme complexity of the transition process makes it almost impossible to render it in a scholarly manner. Maybe this is one of the spheres of the social sciences, where everyone is doomed to be a layman and even dilettante. The political historians and the majority of the journalists lack the economic understanding, the sociologist and the experts in the political studies neglect the anthropological and psychological type of explanations, and so on. In this respect, there is one prevailing feature in the explanation of the transition process in Bulgaria: for the first dozen of years of it mainly the political and the economic aspect were to the fore. The social has been discussed mainly in a sentimental, populist manner. The rest remained almost without attention. Unfortunately.

We may see, indeed, many results in the economics, the international cooperation and the sphere of the political changes. These are the directions of the ‘movement to the different’, in which the achievements are great. There are also some disputable results in the social and the institutional sphere, and some other vague and unarticulated tendencies, which may be of a great importance in the following years. If I may afford the usage of a biological and organic metaphor, I would say that the transition process now enters into its teenage period, which will be decisive for the future development of each transition country. The earlier we articulate what is still unarticulated, the easier it will be to grasp what is going on in our countries, what is to be aimed at and what is to be avoided.

So, let’s exclude the political and the economic aspect – the usual favourites in the transition analyses. What are the achievements in the field of the social? Here, I will refer in brief to the study of a sociologist from the neighboring Serbia Silvano Bolčić: The meaning of the Social System and the Initial Achievements of the “Post-Socialist Transition”. (In: Balkan forum, Vol. 3, numbers 3 (12) September 1995.)

According to him, there are at least 15 indicators in which we can describe the ‘social’ changes of the ‘socialist’ into ‘entrepreneurial’ society:

Among the thousands of articles and papers, which I have read in the past dozen of years I have chosen this one of Silvano Bolčić precisely because of this detailed enumeration of the social and anthropological characteristics, which distinguish the former socialist society and the emerging post-socialist, entrepreneurial society.

All these schematized characteristics and features are very useful as analytical instruments. It seems to me, that some of the peculiarities of the ‘new’ are still much more desirable in my country, than real. Some of the descriptors of the ‘new’ are still such only in a normative and theoretical way. There are some that still are much more elements of a “wishful thinking”, than registration of indisputable social and anthropological tendencies. For example: criterion 5 – the central sphere of society. In respect of my country it is still the political and the politics. They are the central to an extent, which is sometimes unhealthy for the development of the market economy and the private entrepreneurial initiative, which has been mentioned already several times in the papers of the European observers, supervising the preparation for the EU membership and the accession process here. Or criterion 11: the regulation of society. In my country it is still in the column, which describes the ‘old’ and not the ‘new’: the decision making, regarding the use of ‘public property’ and the distribution of the effects of this use, is ‘political’, centralized and rigid, whereas it should be decentralized and in accordance with the market trends. Here I shall not hesitate to add, that unfortunately in Bulgaria, not only in this respect, but also in such wishfully autonomous spheres as the higher education and the life of the religious communities the decision making is nominally ‘political’, but actually partisan, centralized and rigid.

Also, this list of aspects of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ is a very useful instrument: via it we may detect that in some respects the society as a whole has gone far away in respect of the ‘movement to the desirable’, whereas the universities have remained hopelessly behind the fast changes. For example, in Bulgaria we may claim (in respect of criterion 2) that the society has become really an open association of people of different individualities. At the same time, the state universities remained closed communities, where the individual human rights are not respected (for example: there is one university, where the Rector reads the private e-mail of the assistant-professors and once demanded from a certain faculty council to punish disciplinary one of them, who dares in his private mail to criticize him). Also, the democratic participatory procedures in many of the state universities are crudely violated, although they are normatively prescribed and demanded by the Rulebooks and then Higher Education Act.

Further, if we re-read the criteria 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15, and ask ourselves in respect of the Bulgarian state universities in which one of the two columns they have to be situated, the unbiased answer will be: in the column of the ‘old’. The society as a whole may be described by the features, expressed in the column of the ‘new’, but the universities are still places, where:

*The decision making is centralized not only on the national level, but also inside the separate higher educational institutions;

*The model of the ‘good member of the university community’: he or she is the one, who is loyal and disciplined subject, who does only what is assigned to do and never dares to do something individually determined and creative;

*The attitude of the academic community towards the innovations: they have to be introduced by the persons ‘in charge’, and when the groups from the lower levels of the hierarchy have innovative initiatives, they are either postponed for an indefinite future, or marginalized by some insignificant counter-initiative;

*The culture of the academic behavior: encourages conformity and obedience, collectivism and paternalism, and disciplinary punishes the ones, who dare to express their disapproval of the deeds of the academic officials publicly;

*The desirable way of thinking and perceiving the academic reality: the perceiving of the academic life with the charisma of the tradition and the past, and correspondingly - demonizing the ones who tend to the pragmatic and critical attitude to the present situation;

Of course, for the purpose of the present writing I use these schematic qualifications, but anyone who is really interested in a profound sociological and philosophical grasping of the essence of these phenomena in many ‘transition’ countries, has to have patience till the illuminative book by Voldemar Tomusk “The Open World and Closed Societies. Essays on Higher Education Policies ‘in Transition’” sees its printing. For the time being it is still a draft.

III. Where is the university as institution in the Bulgarian ‘transition’ process?

The past year in the social sciences and studies in Bulgaria was marked with a considerable interest to problems, unfortunately neglected so far. The first dozen of years of the transition period have been dominated by the importance of the developments in the political sphere. And hence, I allow myself to generalize, the majority of interpretations, produced in our country and in our language and the problems, that have attracted the focus of the social attention here, might be described with one label - “the supremacy of the reductionist comprehension of the essence of transition”.

If we ask: “What was the role of the Bulgarian university in the Bulgarian transition period?”, the most appropriate answer according to me would be the following. The Bulgarian universities have played no societal role at all in the transition period itself either as institutions, or as communities. Still, to a different question might be given a different answer. If we ask: “What was the place of the university intellectuals in all these processes?”, the answer would be more definite.

As was written earlier, at least one hundred of our intellectuals-compatriots took active position in the public discussion in the media of the transformational process in the past dozen of years. They have written at least one thousand of books, articles and studies (some of them of superb theoretical and/or esthetical value as masterpieces of literature) in Bulgarian and other languages on the essence of the transition. Another hundred of university intellectuals became politicians in the executive and the legislative power, diplomats, editors and publishers. Thousands of Bulgarian intellectuals, artists and public persons have published at least once in our dailies and weeklies what they think about the transition and the various ramifications of the road of the ‘movement to the different’. Still, if we sort these thousands of papers, we will found that the problems of the academic community qua academic and qua community were not discussed at all. Of course, the titles in the bibliography at the end of this paper and in the link resources, to a certain degree are examples of the opposite. But if we count those of them that discuss some present day problem of the higher education and compare this number to the number of the general ‘transition papers’ we will encounter a ratio of somewhat like 1: 1 000.

2. The (university) intellectuals in Bulgaria, moreover have played an extremely active role in the mental and critical preparation for the transition process and the changes at the end of the 80-ies, especially in the so called ‘perestroyka’-period. ( for a detailed analysis of the role of the seminars in the Sofia University as a critical laboratory for the shaping of the intellectual and the political positions of the Bulgarian intellectuals see Николчина, Миглена. Семинарът: начин на употреба. В: “Литературен вестник”, 18-24.9. 2002. And also in: “Критика и хуманизъм”, кн. 14, бр. 2/2002. The text of Miglena Nikolchina is also available in English in: Differences, 13, 1 (2002).

3. The university intellectuals in the past dozen of years have produced enormous amount of written political explanatory texts in all possible kinds of size and genre, published in all possible weeklies and dailies. However, for me almost all these papers are marked by what Silvano Bolčić calls “the supremacy of the reductionist comprehension of the essence of transition”.

The explanations of the transition processes, provided by the intellectuals here had been focused on the first place on the political, on the second place on the political as partisan, and on the third place on the partisan as the only manifestation of the political. Unfortunately, the majority of all these writings witnesses, that most of the colleagues made not only one, but two reductions. They identify the social as political, and further they identify the political with only one of the existing political parties. It’s high time to realize that the social is much, much broader than the political, and the political is much, much broader than what belongs to only one of the available political associations. The reductionist comprehension of the social reality might be not only misleading, but also dangerous. All our transition countries will not become stable and predictable democracies, despite the tremendous positive results in the economic and the political spheres, despite the pluralistic party system and the regular free elections, unless deep societal transformations begin to evolve.

5. Here, it should be noted that according to the majority of the colleagues, involved in the two equips that worked on the project “The status of the society”, and the colleagues, who commented on their papers in the public presentations and publications in the media, the ‘transition is over’. The transition, according to them, is over in its ideological, economic and political aspect.

True, there is a considerable degree of privatization, but there is also ‘gray economy’. Also bitter social feelings are engendered by the profile of the contemporary business elite. Some of the most powerful proprietors and financial oligarchs in Bulgaria come from the former nomenklatura and others from the repressive Department 6 of the Secret security service (‘Durzhavna sigurnost’, what corresponds to the STASI in the former DDR). For instance, according to the Polish journal “Vprost”, the most eminent from the Bulgarian oligarchs Iliya Pavlov, who has never denied his work in “Department 6”, and who currently is the head of “MG corporation”, in the list of the top 25 richest men in South Europe, occupies the 8^th place with personal possessings of $ 1.5 milliard, and Vassil Bozhkov is on the 21^st place with 500 million $… In the middle of March 2003, when I was finishing this text, the mightiest Bulgarian oligarch Ilyia Pavlov was shot dead in the center of Sofia. As might be expected this event arose an eager debate about the Bulgarian elite – who are the people, included in the elitist circles; who are the persons-leaders in the Bulgarian business, the political class and the media? Whence is their economic, social and symbolic status? Whence is their primary capital? And so on, and so forth. Even in this case, and even in such circumstances, the Bulgarian media and the university intellectuals kept on repeating again and again the platitudes about the elite and the lost role of the intellectuals as public authorities. Nobody mentioned the word ‘institution’ or the phrase ‘deliberative democracy’.

That’s why one of my final theses here will be that the Bulgarian university intellectuals continue to live with the memories of the past, rather than with the problems of the present. Not to speak about a vision for possible future developments.

The general stratification and polarization in the society, the great degree of the pauperization of considerable part of the Bulgarian citizens was indicated by the two groups of sociologists in the project “The status of the society”. They have noted also such curious features as the traditional and inexplicable Bulgarian pessimism and the negativism, with which even some parts of the population, who have gained from the transition, subjectively perceive themselves as losers ( Peter-Emil Mitev and Ivan Krustev).

Similar tendencies can be detected in the other transition countries as well. What to say about one of the phrases, used by the Serb scholar Silvano Bolčić (and many others): “from a plan economy to a clan economy”? What to say about the murder of Zoran Dzhindhich? What to say about the expression, used by the Hungarian sociologist and economist Attila Agh: “from nomenclatura to clientura”? Why all the people in Bulgaria kept repeating that in the period 1997-2001 the state was run by “the dictatorship of the cousins”, not knowing of course that this label belongs to Ernest Gellner? Why the Estonian Voldemar Tomusk uses the expression “from nomenklatura to kleptoklatura”?

It is obvious that even the greatest, seemingly indisputable political and economic developments in the former socialist countries, have their “other side”, the shadowed side, the societal consequences of which might be devastating, if the university intellectuals, who possess the most powerful voices continue to deny them. Moreover, it with be marvelous, if at least some of them devote their hectic political attitude to the effort of building the academy as a self-governing and self-regulating community, which might be and should be a paradigm for the society as a whole.

It’s high time at least some university intellectuals to redefine their social mission and to re-target the scope of their societal activity.

6. Last but not least, the two equips of researches had certain disputations and disagreements on some of the conclusions and the proposals of the project, which in my eyes were not that dramatic and finally at least for me formed a picture of mutual complementarity, rather than confrontation and incompatibility. From the particular subjects, on which the two groups reached to a complete agreement, it should be stressed that there is one, which is directed in our target: both the equips expressed their non-satisfaction with the status of the educational institutions as institutions. Toma Tomov, Haralan Alexandrov, Ivan Ivanov and Rafael Chichek in their paper “The Bulgarian society: we are giving you ideas, you have to fulfill them”( quoted with its original Bulgarian title above) stated: “The socializing institutions at home do not create emotionally mature individuals. Most of all, this bitter statement applies for the school and the university education. The impossibility for the person to be a member of a group when one is forming oneself destines the people to think of themselves as a result of a foreign project. Even though the social-engineering ideology of the totalitarian state is officially withdrawn, the program for the social action seems to work according to the old receipt. In this sense the debate whether we should have mature-exams in the secondary schools substituted the far more essential question what kind of education we do want to have. If we want the education to create mature individuals, who are able to recognize and to oppose the destructive practices in the social power, and its abuses, we should enforce the principles, who put the young people in a responsible and active position in their own formation”.

Eugene Dainov and Maria Pancheva in their paper “The debate on the status of the Bulgarian society” (quoted with its original Bulgarian title above) expressed almost the same estimation, going even further: “In our country there is a considerable number of open mobile individuals, but they live in the milieu, which is formed and regulated by closed institutions. The institutions do not help the open individuals to push the development forward. On the contrary they impede them, becoming thus allies of the closed practices, ideologies and milieus, which pull us backwards. If this conclusion is right, from it follows that in order to push the social development forward, a radical institutional reform should be made”.

The academic community nowadays in Bulgaria according to me is perfectly describable by the poetic words of Zygmunt Bauman: ‘Community is nowadays another name for paradise lost – but one to which we dearly hope to return, and so we feverishly

seek the roads that may bring us there’.( “Community. Seeking safety in an insecure world”, Polity, 2001, p.3) Speaking more prosaically we could say that the academic community especially in our transition country and the institution it creates should be one of these types of institutions, the development of which in the next years will predetermine the direction of the changes to come for the whole society. That’s why it’s high time at least some of the most prominent Bulgarian intellectuals to abandon the blind partisan self-identification, to stop the advocacy for the “corrupt and incompetent” partisan йlites and to look at the humble university life. Or at least to try to do so.

Now, after the first wave of the transition processes, the real need for deep social transformation is the agenda. The political, the ideological and the economic movements in the transition might be declared that are over. But the social transformation still hasn’t begun. As one of its possible strongest catalyst would be the shaping out of a new academic institutionalism, the appearance of new academic institutions and communities. The strive to the ‘new’ could be defined not only in the sense of creating new academic establishments, but also in the sense of new self-regulation, new management and new functioning of the old ones. Otherwise they will remain in the status quo ante – islands of pre-modern, closed, unaccountable communities amidst the rapidly modernizing society. Till when?

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4 A typical “Rawlsian” research in the field of sociology of education is, for example, Adam Smith and Gordon Marshal’s article “The meritocratic equality of possibilities: economic efficiency, social justice, or both?” in Sociological problems, 1997/3. Typically communitarian is Kenneth A. Strike’s study Schools as Communities: Four Metaphors, Three Models, and a Dilemma or Two. In: Journal of Philosophy and Education. The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. Vol. 34, Issue 4, November 2000. Blackwell Publishers.

5 See John Rawls, “Political Liberalism”, New York, 1993, Columbia UP, p. 40 n., Lecture 1, § 7: “Neither Community nor an Association”.

6 See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory, London, 1985, Duckworth, p. 151, in the chapter “Aristotle’s Account of the Virtues”.

7 Such as Romano Prodi, who boasts a first-class Catholic, that is neo-thomist and neo-aristotelian university education.

8 See Aristotle’s Politics, 1931, transl. From Greek by William Ellis, book III, ch. 6, 1279a.

9 This tradition was established in 1902, when the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, at the request of the Academic Council, proclaimed 25 November to be St. Kliment Ohridsky’s day (it had till then been celebrated as the day of St Cyril and Methodius and their five disciples). After the passage of the University Act in 1904 the then academic staff became fully aware that the autonomous university should evade the excessive regulation of state administration, but should give an account to the society once a year. For details see Prof. Ivan Georgov, On University Development. In SU 1988 – 1928 Almanac, pp. 1 – 167, Sofia, 1929, Artist Press, University Library No 91.

Александров, Харалан. Живот в култура на заучена безпомощност. Интервю, направено от Марин Бодаков. В: “Култура”, бр. 39, 1.11. 2002.

Атанасов, Владимир. Дебатът за българското образование предстои. Разговор, воден от Марин Бодаков. В: “Култура”, бр. 15. 12.4. 2002.

Национална агенция за оценяване и акредитация.

Bogoev, Ksente: Stabilization, Social and Structural Problems of the Countries in Transition. In: Balkan forum, Vol. 3, number 3 (12) September 1995.