U.S. and Non-U.S. Scholars

Fulbright New Century Scholars Program
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Kwiek, Marek

• Professor and Director
  
• Poznan University
  
• Center for Public Policy
  
• Poland

Professor Marek Kwiek is the founder and director of the Center for Public Policy (since 2002, www.cpp.amu.edu.pl), a research unit of Poznan University, Poland, and professor in the Department of Philosophy. As a social scientist and higher education policy analyst, he received his MA in 1992, PhD in 1995, Habilitation title in 1998 and university professorship in 2001. Dr. Kwiek is a former Fulbright scholar (1994-1995, U. of Virginia), Kosciuszko Foundation scholar (1996-1997, UC Berkeley), Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow (2002-2003, NED/Washington, DC), and Open Society Institute International Policy Fellow (2000-2001).
His research interests include globalization and education, European educational policies, international organizations, welfare state reforms, the modern institution of the university, transformations of the academic profession, private higher education, as well philosophy of education and intellectual history. He has published 80 papers and 8 books, most recently The University and the State: A Study into Global Transformation, a monograph about the impact of global reformulations of the role of the state on the future of public universities.
He has been a higher education policy expert to the European Commission, USAID, OECD/CERI, OECD/IMHE, the World Bank, UNESCO, OSCE, the Council of Europe, as well as to several governments and academic institutions. He has also been a participant in more than a dozen collaborative, international (both global and European) research projects (funded by e.g. Ford, Rockefeller and Soros foundations, UNESCO/CEPES, EU etc); most recently, in an EU-funded project EUEREK: European Universities for Entrepreneurship – Their Role in the Europe of Knowledge (2004-2007). He serves as an editorial board member in a number of international journals in higher education policy and research, including Higher Education Quarterly, European Educational Research Journal, and Globalisation, Education, and Societies.
Select Publications:

• Kwiek, Marek (2006): The University and the State. A Study into Global Transformations. 424 pp. Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang Scientific Publishers
• Kwiek, Marek (2006): The Emergent European Educational Policies Under Scrutiny. The Bologna Process From a Central European Perspective  in: V. Tomusk, ed., Creating the European Area of Higher Education. Voices from the Periphery. Dordecht: Springer.  87-116.
• Kwiek, Marek (2005): The University and the State in a Global Age: Renegotiating the Traditional Social Contract? European Educational Research Journal. Vol. 4. No. 4. December 2005. 324-341.
• Kwiek, Marek (2004): Intellectuals, Power, and Knowledge. Studies in the Philosophy of Culture and Education. 301 pp. Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang Scientific Publishers.
• Kwiek, Marek, editor (2003): The University, Globalization,  Central Europe.  260 pp. Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang Scientific Publishers

Inhibitors to Equity of Access to Higher Education in the European Transition Countries

From an international comparative perspective, current efforts to achieve equitable, accessible higher education in Central and Eastern Europe in practice have not been successful. Inequities persist, and inhibitors exist, some are deeply embedded in social and institutional structures inherited from the communist era; others are organizational and procedural, related to changeable policies and procedures, and can be influenced more easily. As research aims, I want to study and systematize these inhibitors in different policies promoting access to higher education (both for the under-represented and for national minorities) in the selected post-communist transition countries in Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe. Within my research visit to Stanford University, I plan to analyze a region-specific systematization of inhibitors in a more global, theoretical context and in the context of a variety of American access-promoting policies. A study on inhibitors to the widening of access to high-quality higher education in the region is both timely and policy-relevant: only now are transition economies beginning to be knowledge-driven and in need of increasingly “knowledge-rich” workforce; and the systems studied are currently rapidly expanding in a mostly uncoordinated, if not chaotic manner, without clear policy guidance. It has also been severely under-researched in the global literature. The systematization of inhibitors will be based on my comparative research on country-specific policies in the region, my conceptual and comparative work at Stanford, and my intense collaborative work with other NCS fellows. I will carry out innovative research on current inhibitors to achieving equity of access to higher education and prepare much-needed solid regional policy recommendations for the future.