The team of lawyers from SWPS University, under the leadership of Professor Hubert Izdebski, will take an active role in preparing the guidelines for the new Law on Higher Education in Poland..
Polish law on higher education requires a comprehensive reform. The current legislation is based on principles that would only perpetuate the status quo. The reform requires new guidelines, which would allow universities to introduce new solutions and to modernize the academia. The focus is on new quality of higher education, new requirements for academics, and on modern management and financing of universities and research. The team of lawyers from SWPS University, under the leadership of Professor Hubert Izdebski, will take an active role in preparing the guidelines for the new Law on Higher Education in Poland.
The aim of the project is to propose legal guidelines for the new law on higher education in Poland. The task must take into consideration the relation of this act to other laws pertaining to higher education, such as the Law on Academic Degrees and Title and Degrees and Title in the Arts, the financing of higher education and research, and the whole system of higher education.
The guidelines should contain a formulated goal of the legislation, including an assessment of the current status quo, the core of the proposed solutions, the scope of the proposed regulations, and the key aspects of the law, which require reform. The guidelines should also contain an impact assessment, including expected socio-economic results of the new legislation and information about consultations. Two types of consultations have been planned: a survey addressed to a representative group of academics and three conferences for representatives of various types of higher education institutions and institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN).
Understanding that Polish public and private higher education institutions are facing a challenge of developing human potential of the highest caliber, whose skills and talents should be aligned with the current needs of the national economy and global employment market, our research will be focused on generating solutions that will meet those challenges with respect to the organization, management, financing, highly qualified academic staff, and high level of education and research (including applied sciences).
The proposed guidelines must stem from the following principles: the uniformity of the higher education system in Poland (which does not preclude the need for functional categorization of the institutions), respect for the autonomy of universities, which means regulatory intervention only in the matters of public interest, and allowing higher education institutions maximum freedom to select best solutions and ways of combining teaching and research, and theory and practice.