ABSTRACT
Having helped to bring the Communist regime to a halt by student-led protests in 1989, Czech higher education has been, since then, through a number of significant systemic changes. After 1989, the system was depoliticised and deregulated through the liberalisation of institutional structures. This entailed the restoration of academic rights and freedoms as well as the abolition of numerus clausus, which had been a method of limiting the number of students who might study at a university (Cerych, 1997; Harach et al., 1992). Czech higher education institutions (HEIs) were thus granted substantial autonomy in the matters of curriculum and management (MŠMT, 1994) in order to develop into leading centres of education, research, and creative activity (Beneš et al., 2003). In 1992, a formula funding mechanism of study places was introduced with the aim of working it up to objective measures for the funding of the educational activities of HEIs (Turner, 1994). Despite the modifications to the funding base and the opening of six new regional universities, demand for study places in the 1990s outstripped institutional capacities.
