ABSTRACT
In Poland, it was only a few years ago that doctoral studies became the dominant mode of advanced academic education. As in other EU countries, this development is part of the Bologna Process and it is strictly linked to the political strategy of building knowledge-based societies. This political vision connects vague concepts and metaphors that form an ideological structure, which implies that: a knowledge economy builds a knowledge society composed of life-long learning individuals and learning communities; people are valuable assets of such societies, and the best way of providing for welfare is investing in people; so the human capital that is created brings quick and certain return. In addition, human capital is balanced by social capital – it is not only individuals, but also their communities, families and cultures that ‘count’. The policies that are involved in this ideology combine antagonistic ideas of investing
in people and their knowledges on the one hand, and cost reductions on the other. As Western economies usually compete with cheaper states with lower wages and limited social provisions, it is cost-efficiency rather than growing investment that, in fact, becomes the chief aim of reforms of the public sector. The dominant and globally promoted solution of this conflict is private investment that has to supplement deficiencies in public expenditure. When it comes to learning, more and more often those who are supposed to invest in it are the learners themselves. In Poland, more than 50 per cent of tertiary education students have to pay tuition fees nowadays. The policies directed to a knowledge economy are the background for many devel-
opments in research and higher education. There is a constant and growing pressure on the universities to become ‘practical’ in training professionals and to provide researchbased solutions to problems defined by people in business and politics. To put it briefly, those who claim to have ‘invested’ in higher education, including politicians, business people and students themselves, demand ‘return’. Higher education becomes a mass phenomenon, with enrolments running at around 50 per cent of the population of 20year-olds in many countries. Therefore, HE must become cheaper, shorter BA studies are meant to practically train the cohorts of youngsters and quickly throw them into unstable job markets. Of course, the large numbers of those students do not come to the
university for traditionally understood ‘knowledge’ (usually described as dry); what they need is skills that make them employable. In this context, the categories of ‘knowledge’ and ‘skills’ are sometimes difficult to differentiate, as the following fragment of an interview with a German graduate illustrates:
Q.: What knowledge do you consider significant from the point of view of your present employment? A.: When I look back on my studies, there are some significant key qualifications
I have acquired at the university: First, oral and writing skills, they are important for teaching in order to be able to develop useful methods and contents of learning in very short time […], and to know how to socialise with others, e.g., for exchanging materials, experiences and for making friendships.
