Surviving a Crisis: Transformation, Adaptation, and Resistance in Higher Education

Abstract

After periods of crisis, it has been assumed that social institutions like higher education will also change radically – and perhaps even fail. In contrast to this expectation, this paper demonstrates that such moments of intense disruption result not only in transformation but are additionally accompanied by significant levels of adaptation and some resistance. Drawing from a larger study of the impact of crisis on higher education, this paper explores some of the ways that higher education responds to major political, economic, and social change at both system and organizational levels. Taking the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as the moment of crisis, the paper presents findings from a comparative case study of three ex-Soviet countries with new primary source data generated by interviews with experienced faculty members at the frontline of change. Understanding what it takes for higher education to survive a crisis makes an important contribution to comparative higher education studies by showing the variegated ways that higher education institutions and systems respond to crisis and to filling the gap in theory-driven explanations of system and organizational responses to major change.

Keywords

• Crisis
• transformation
• adaptation
• resistance
• change
• continuity
• new institutionalism
• collapse of the Soviet Union
• Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Tajikistan

References

1. Ahn, E., Dixon, J., & Chekmareva, L. (2018). Looking at Kazakhstan’s higher education landscape: From transition to transformation between 1920-2015. In J. Huisman, A. Smolentseva, & I. Froumin (Eds.), 25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries: Reform and Continuity (pp. 199–227). Palgrave Macmillan.
2. Akyildiz, S. (2013). ‘Learn, learn, learn!’ Soviet style in Uzbekistan: Implementation and planning. In S. Akyildiz & R. Carlson (Eds.), Social and Cultural Change in Central Asia: The Soviet Legacy (pp. 13–31). Routledge.
3. Beissinger, M. R. (2002). Nationalist mobilization and the collapse of the Soviet State. Cambridge University Press.
4. Brennan, J., King, R., & Lebeau, Y. (2004). The role of universities in the transformation of societies. Association of Commonwealth Universities/Centre for Higher Education Research and Information.
5. DeYoung, A. J., Kataeva, Z., & Jonbekova, D. (2018). Higher education in Tajikistan: Institutional landscape and key policy developments. In J. Huisman, A. Smolentseva, & I. Froumin (Eds.), 25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries: Reform and Continuity (pp. 363–385). Palgrave Macmillan.
6. Diogo, S., Carvalho, T., & Amaral, A. (2015). Institutionalism and Organizational Change. In J. Huisman, H. De Boer, D. D. Dill, & M. Souto-Otero (Eds.), The Palgrave International Handbook of Higher Education Policy and Governance (pp. 114–131). Palgrave Macmillan.
7. Eliæson, S., Harutyunyan, L., & Titarenko, L. (Eds.). (2016). After the Soviet Empire: Legacies and pathways. Brill.
8. Frank, A. G. (1992). The Centrality of Central Asia. Studies in History, 8(1), 43–97. https://doi.org/10.1177/025764309200800103

9. Gamarnik, G. N., & Beloslyudtseva, V. N. (Eds.). (2009). Reformirovaniye vyshego obrazovniya v Kazakhstane i Bolonskii Protsess [The reform of higher education in Kazakhstan and the Bologna Process]. National Tempus Office, Kazakhstan.
10. Gornitzka, Å., & Maassen, P. (2000). Analyzing organizational change in higher education. Comparative Perspectives on Universities, 19, 83–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0195-6310(00)80021-6
11. Gornitzka, Å., & Maassen, P. (2014). Dynamics of Convergence and Divergence: Exploring Accounts of Higher Education Policy Change. In P. Mattei (Ed.), University adaptation in difficult economic times (pp. 13–29). Oxford University Press.
12. Government of the Kyrgyz Republic. (1993). On the reorganization of the Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic (No. 386). http://cbd.minjust.gov.kg/act/view/ru-ru/38693?ckwds=%25d0%25b0%25d0%25ba%25d0%25b0%25d0%25b4%25d0%25b5%25d0%25bc%25d0%25b8%25d1%258f%2B%25d0%25bd%25d0%25b0%25d1%2583%25d0%25ba
13. Grzymala-Busse, A., & Jones Luong, P. (2002). Reconceptualizing the state: Lessons from post-communism. Politics & Society, 30(4), 529–554. https://doi.org/10.1177/003232902237825
14. Gumport, P. J. (2005). The Organisation of Knowledge: Imperatives for Continuity and Change in Higher Education. In Governing Knowledge (pp. 113–132). Springer. http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/1-4020-3504-7_8.pdf
15. Hall, P. A. (2010). Historical institutionalism in rationalist and sociological perspective. In James. Mahoney & K. Thelen (Eds.), Explaining institutional change: Ambiguity, agency, and power (pp. 204–223). Cambridge University Press.
16. Heyneman, S. P. (2005). Post-graduate training and research in higher education management in Kazakhstan. Kazakh Journal on Higher Education, 3, 27–34.
17. Isaacs, R., & Polese, A. (2015). Between “Imagined” and “Real” nation-building: Identities and nationhood in post-Soviet Central Asia. Nationalities Papers, 43(3), 371–382. https://doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2015.1029044
18. Japarova, R. (2004). Vyshaya shkola v Kyrgyzstane: Problemi modernizatsii [Higher education in Kyrgyzstan: Issues of modernization]. Higher Education in Russia, 8, 134–139.
19. Koning, E. A. (2016). The three institutionalisms and institutional dynamics: Understanding endogenous and exogenous change. Journal of Public Policy, 36(4), 639–664. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0143814X15000240
20. Kotkin, S., & Beissinger, M. R. (2014). The Historical Legacies of Communism: An Empirical Agenda. In M. R. Beissinger & S. Kotkin (Eds.), Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe (pp. 1–27). Cambridge University Press.
21. Kuraev, A. (2016). Soviet higher education: An alternative construct to the western university paradigm. Higher Education, 71(2), 181–193. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9895-5
22. Kwiek, M. (2013). From System Expansion to System Contraction: Access to Higher Education in Poland. Comparative Education Review, 57(3), 553–576.
23. Kyrgyz State Technical University. (2014, September 3). Istoriya KGTU [History of KSTU]. https://kstu.kg/istoriya-kgtu/
24. Maassen, P. A. M., & Olsen, J. P. (Eds.). (2007). University dynamics and European integration. Springer.
25. March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (2008). Elaborating the “New Institutionalism.” In R. A. W. Rhodes, S. A. Binder, & B. A. Rockman (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (pp. 3–20). Oxford University Press.
26. Meyer, H.-D., & Rowan, B. (Eds.). (2006). The new institutionalism in education. State University of New York Press.
27. Meyer, J. W., Ramirez, F. O., Frank, D. J., & Schofer, E. (2007). Higher education as an institution. In P. J. Gumport (Ed.), Sociology of higher education: Contributions and their contexts (pp. 187–221). Johns Hopkins University Press.
28. Ministry of Education, Republic of Tajikistan, OSI Tajikistan, & Education Reform Support Unit “Pulse.” (2005). Perspectives of the development of higher education system in the Republic of Tajikistan. Draft.
29. Mullojanov, P. (2019). In Search of ‘National Purpose’: In Theory and Practice. Formation and Main Features of National Ideologies in Post-Soviet Central Asia. In R. Isaacs & A. Frigerio (Eds.), Theorizing Central Asian Politics—The State, Ideology and Power (pp. 121–144). Palgrave Macmillan.
30. Nazarbayev, N. (1997, October). The strategy for development of the Republic of Kazakhstan until the year 2030. http://www.akorda.kz/en/official_documents/strategies_and_programs Newman, K. L. (2000). Organizational transformation during institutional upheaval. The Academy of Management Review, 25(3), 602–619.
31. North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change, and economic performance. Cambridge University Press.
32. Oketch, M., McCowan, T., & Schendel, R. (2014). The impact of tertiary education on development. A rigorous literature review. Department for International Development. https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Portals/0/PDF%20reviews%20and%20summaries/Tertiary%20education%202014%20Oketch%20report.pdf?ver=2014-06-24-161044-887
33. Pearce, J. L., & Branyiczki, I. (1993). Revolutionizing Bureaucracies: Managing Change in Hungarian State-owned Enterprises. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 6(2), 53–64. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534819310036512
34. Platonova, D. (2018). Appendix. In J. Huisman, A. Smolentseva, & I. Froumin (Eds.), 25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries: Reform and Continuity (pp. 461–482). Palgrave Macmillan.
35. Polyzoi, E., & Dneprov, E. (2010). A framework for understanding dramatic change: Educational transformation in post-Soviet Russia. In Post-Socialism is not Dead: (Re)Reading the Global in Comparative Education (Vol. 14, pp. 155–179). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
36. Prisching, M. (1993). The University as a Social Institution: The Change in Academic Institutions in Germany at the End of the Nineteenth Century. Journal of Economic Studies, 20(4/5), 30–51. https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000000170
37. Schwartzman, S., Pinheiro, R., & Pillay, P. (Eds.). (2015). Higher Education in the BRICS Countries: Investigating the Pact between Higher Education and Society. Imprint: Springer.
38. Segizbaev, O. A. (2003). Preobrazovanie sotsializma v rynok: Prichiny, posledstviya i problemy: Kratkiy sotsialno-ekonomicheskiy ocherk [The transformation of socialism to the market: Causes, consequences and issues. A short socio-economic review]. Tip. operativnoĭ pechati.
39. Shadymanova, J., & Amsler, S. (2018). Institutional strategies of higher education reform in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan: Differentiating to survive between state and market. In J. Huisman, A. Smolentseva, & I. Froumin (Eds.), 25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries: Reform and Continuity (pp. 229–257). Palgrave Macmillan.
40. Shagdar, B. (2006). Human capital in Central Asia: Trends and challenges in education. Central Asian Survey, 25(4), 515–532. https://doi.org/10.1080/02634930701210609
41. Silova, I. (Ed.). (2011). Globalization on the margins: Education and postsocialist transformations in Central Asia (http://go.utlib.ca/cat/7602150). Information Age Pub.
42. Smolentseva, A., Huisman, J., & Froumin, I. (2018). Transformation of higher education institutional landscape in post-Soviet countries: From Soviet model to where? In J. Huisman, A. Smolentseva, & I. Froumin (Eds.), 25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries: Reform and Continuity (pp. 1–43). Palgrave Macmillan.
43. Statistics Agency under the President of the Republic of Tajikistan. (n.d.). Vyshee uchebniye zavedeniya, 1991-2017 [Higher education institutions, 1991-2017]. Retrieved March 5, 2019, from http://stat.ww.tj/library/ru/higher_education.xls
44. Stensaker, B. (2015). Organizational identity as a concept for understanding university dynamics. Higher Education, 69(1), 103–115. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10734-014-9763-8
45. Streeck, Wolfgang., & Thelen, K. (Eds.). (2005). Beyond continuity: Institutional change in advanced political economies. Oxford University Press.
46. Suarez, F. F., & Oliva, R. (2005). Environmental change and organizational transformation. Industrial and Corporate Change, 14(6), 1017–1041. https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dth078
47. Tight, M. (1994). Crisis, what crisis? Rhetoric and reality in higher education. British Journal of Educational Studies, 42(4), 363–374. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.1994.9974009
48. Turner, J. H. (1997). The institutional order: Economy, kinship, religion, polity, law, and education in evolutionary and comparative perspective. Longman.
49. UIS Statistics. (2018, September). Education: Distribution of enrolment by field of study: Tertiary education. UIS. http://data.uis.unesco.org/index.aspx?queryid=137
50. Yakavets, N. (2014). Educational reform in Kazakhstan: The first decade of independence. In D. Bridges (Ed.), Educational reform and internationalisation: The case of school reform in Kazakhstan (pp. 1–27). Cambridge University Press.
51. Yakavets, N., & Dzhadrina, M. (2014). Educational reform in Kazakhstan: Entering the world arena. In D. Bridges (Ed.), Educational reform and internationalisation: The case of school reform in Kazakhstan (pp. 28–52). Cambridge University Press.