Abstract:

Polish higher education has been operating in a market economy environment only for twenty seven years and there are still a lot of problems to solve. One of them is offering the best level of education and research for international students and partners. To achieve this goal the legal system is still modified and developed, what certainly has benefits, but also introduces uncertainty and is not conductive to individual career development.

In the contemporary conditions it is hard to deny that development of universities and strengthen their positions in international rankings is one of the main challenges facing governments and educational managers. Nevertheless, the success of this task is largely dependent on quality and competences of human resources and could not be guaranteed only by legal changes. Therefore the main aim of the article is to identify and assess the influence of legal changes on evaluation and promotion system in higher education in Poland.

To achieve this aim in the first part of the article the research backgrounds of evaluation and promotion system in higher education are presented. Then the legal changes in Polish higher education are described with their main directions and expected results. After it, the evolution of the employees’ evaluation system - caused by legal changes - is characterized in a form of the case study from one of Polish universities. The case study on the influence of legal changes includes: the description of evaluation rules, the recent evaluation effects and perceiving the changes by employees in the light of survey results.

The main results show that introduced changes have increased the publication number and they have accelerated the process of professional advancement. Nevertheless, the outcomes of legal changes are now visible and perceptible mostly in domestic perspective. Additionally, their undoubted side effect is: the increase in job insecurity and the fears of further radical changes.

Keywords:

Higher education in Poland, evaluation systems, promotion systems, legal changes in higher education.