Public universities in post-socialist states are
becoming almost un-academic
Accepted 6th
August, 2020
Dr. Andraž Teršek
Faculty of Education and Faculty of Humanities,
University of Primorska (Koper) and European
Faculty of Law, New University (Ljubljana and
Nova Gorica) (Republic of Slovenia)
Too many and firm, verifiable signs indicating
the path that Slovenian public universities and
universities in other European Post-Socialist
states, as now the EU Member State, have taken
in the last two decades to express several
reasons for legitimate concern and criticism. In
order to fulfill their social role and function,
as guardians of knowledge, thought, critical
reflection open-mindedness and give even cause
for serious concern, universities have bowed to
an aggressive logic of the market, according to
which- as university teacher or researcher -
each individual should only be worth as much as
his or her work can procure on the market
(competition). Instead of resisting the purely
bureaucratic and brutal administrative
conditions and criteria for the selection and
appointment of teachers and researchers, the
universities have subjected themselves
completely uncritically to such a dictate of
state authorities and committees. Academics do
not focus as much on the content and ethics of
the work processes at universities as they
should. Instead they have become, too many of
them, passive and apathetic slaves of the
robotized technocratic dehumanization.
Anti-political agents are no longer in the front
line defending the university and the academic
world such as knowledge, thinking
self-realization and active critical
citizenship. "Political animals," as Aristotle
said. Because of these phenomena, this problem,
the universities have considerably failed to
take care of the education of critically
thinking citizens, of moral personalities and
courageous civil intellectuals equipped with
authentic and high-quality knowledge, with
self-respect, combined with an appropriate
ethical self-understanding of their systemic and
social role and with self-awareness of their
most important public role in the maintenance
and progress of genuine democracy and the
legitimacy of the political system, the legal
order and the social environment. In view of
what has happened at universities, it is almost
impossible to speak of the genuine, quality and
effective exercise of the obligation of
universities to safeguard and promote knowledge
as a value. And this is not only the problem of
the Republic of Slovenia. It seems that the
universities in the Post-Socialist states have
become almost non-academic.
Key words:
Universities, knowledge, democratization of
society, post-socialist EU Member State,
science, ethics, Critical Citizenship.
This is an open access article
published under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
Cite this article as:
Teršek DrA (2020). Public universities in
post-socialist states are becoming almost un-academic. Acad. J. Educ. Res.
8(12): 522-527.