Higher Education Reform—From Recovery to Bologna

Abstract

An emerging democracy needs a vibrant higher education system (Saltmarsh & Zlotkowski, 2011). Unfortunately, in the immediate post-war years, university research was almost nonexistent and university instruction was poor. In the last ten years, higher education has improved, but it has struggled to meet the requirements of the Bologna Process and has seen an explosion of private higher education institutions. In a 2010 report, the Human Rights Center (HRC) of the University of Sarajevo summarized the state of higher education in BiH: ‘The post-war Higher Education System in Bosnia and Herzegovina is strongly marked by the following characteristics: decentralization and ethnic divisions; growing number of education institutions and students; overlap between intellectual and political elites; corruption; “brain-drain”; and diminished research potential’ (p. 8). Before the war, the state directed higher education in BiH and predominately prepared students for highly specialized technical trades, as was typical in socialist countries (Spaulding, 1998). After initial recovery efforts were completed, Western European interests, such as the Council of Europe Trans-European Programme for Co-operation in Higher Education in Central and Eastern Europe, began providing assistance to BiH in an effort to modernize and integrate higher education in BiH into the European community (Benedek, 1997), often offering financial incentives for cooperation and collaboration (Sambunjak & Simunovic, 2007).