Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15516/cje.v26i2.5118
Research on Higher Education Policy Directions: Content Analysis of Strategic Documents
Ruzica Jurcevic
orcid.org/0000-0003-1708-6042
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Zoran Horvat
orcid.org/0000-0001-5531-1541
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
This paper presents the results of a survey conducted in 2022, the purpose of which was to investigate the prevailing paradigmatic directions of higher education policy. The method of qualitative content analysis was used for the survey, and the analysis included 15 international and European strategic documents on higher and university education. The research hypothesis was that the concepts belonging to the neoliberal paradigmatic orientation of higher education policy are more represented in the selected documents than the concepts corresponding to the humanistic orientation, and that there are differences between international and European documents in terms of orientation towards a specific policy direction. The results of the research show that in the majority of the selected documents there is more emphasis on activities that correspond to the neoliberal orientation of the policy, such as the need to link higher education to the labor market, the commercialization of research results, and the role of universities in economic progress, and less emphasis on the role of higher education in the enlightenment and emancipation of the individual, which is associated with the humanistic orientation. The t-test revealed a statistically significant difference among the documents in the presentation of neoliberal and humanistic concepts.
Keywords
educational policy; globalization; humanistic idea; neoliberalism; university
Hrčak ID:
319140
URI
Publication date:
26.6.2024.
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