Higher Education Governance in Poland: Reform Pathway from the Communist Regime to Law 2.0

This article develops a country case study on the Polish higher education (HE) system governance regime by using the governance equalizer model to analyse how each reform over the last three decades has altered its formal power structure. In particular, we focus on the most recent HE governance reform (Law 2.0), which has not yet been addressed from a system governance perspective. Findings show Poland’s enduring unfitness in any ideal-type HE governance theoretical framework. Despite a series of reforms, the Polish power-sharing arrangement is still a compromise that combines the preferences of policymakers towards the market model with the legacy of the institutionalized, deeply-entrenched, and change-resistant academic self-governance model reintroduced in 1990. Thus, even after Law 2.0, Polish HE system governance is still stuck at a crossroads of academic self-governance and market models because the past is constraining feasible policy alternatives and new policies are adapted to existing principles.