Evolving Privatization in Eastern and Central European Higher Education

Abstract

With the fall of communism in 1989, Eastern and Central Europe would quickly become part of an already strong global tide of privatization in higher education. Nowhere else did private higher education rise so suddenly or strongly from virtual nonexistence to a major regional presence. A fresh database allows us to analyze the extent and dimensions of that presence, including various national and subregional quantitative dimensions. Yet the private sector is strongly challenged on several fronts, including paradoxically by the public sector’s own partial privatization, sometimes closely linked to the private-sector growth. Nonetheless, private higher education has continued to grow thus far into the new century, with shifting national and subregional patterns. Higher education privatization remains a noteworthy reality in Eastern and Central Europe but it is an evolving reality.