Abstract:

Nowadays the system of high education is an integrated part of social (cohesion) and political (democratization) development. This concerns especially the history and reality of the transformation process in the countries of Middle and Eastern Europe after 1989, where the high education, research and science policy function as the space of European integration. In this time as the main phenomenon inside the high education and research policy appears the general process of reorientation as a decisive part of social, economic and political transformation. – The following considerations are concentrated on the reality of high education and research in Poland in the last decade with the aim to design the main steps towards the new reform of high education as a part and at the same an expression of the integration into ERA.
Hereby the present condition of high education in Poland seems to be a paradigmatic example of transformation for all other countries in eastern Europe, what shows us the analysis presented recently by OECD (Report 2011). And as the priority of the research and science policy appears the implementation of the Lisboan-Strategy and Bologna-System. In the Reports about the high education in Poland (Ministry of Science and High Education 2008; Ernst&Young 2010) are underlined the negative aspects in the area of education and research such us: 1) the low degree of international and intersectoral mobility of academic staff; 2) the phenomenon of the ‘inbreeding’ employment in the academic career; 3) the absence of the private, non-public financial mechanism for research and science as the result of a low degree in cooperation between university and industry; 4) the concentration on didactic with increasing number of private high school with extra-mural studies as the main source of financial profit.
The following analysis characterise paradigmatically the situation and changes in the system of high education including the main phenomenon’s and priorities in the research and science policy. This is extrapolated through: 1) the specificity of the engineering science in the system of high education and the role of humanities in the engineers formation with the envisaged transdisciplinar competences, and then 2) the high education, research and science policy as one of the principal factors concerning the international relation.

Keywords:

High education and research policy, Social transformations, Transfer of knowledge and technology and the international relations, Interdisciplinary research pro.