Higher education reform in Estonia: a legal perspective

Abstract

This article looks at the higher education reform in Estonia since 1988. Author shows how over a few years ‘university education’ as the meaning of higher education was replaced by much broader ‘post-secondary education’. Another important issue to be covered is the dynamics of the legislative reform—starting with the creation of normative regulations for new institutional groups, and as a second step bringing them into conformity with the Civil Code adopted in 1994. The final part of the article discusses various implications of the new legislation—related to funding, content of studies, and governance—on higher education. Particularly as related to private education it is concluded that most recent reforms do not encourage private initiative to offer higher education, and support orthodox positions with regard to content of higher education studies. This is considered of being not helpful for the development of the learning society.