Ambiguous Europeanization: Higher Education in the Czech Republic Between “Knowledge-Based Economy” and “Europe of Knowledge”

Based on the case of the Czech Republic, this paper seeks to analyze two antagonistic policy programs in competition to determine the direction of Europeanization of Higher Education (HE). The first program is classified as the Europe of Knowledge. Its discursive practice frames education as a public good and knowledge as an intellectual commons; it interprets Europeanization as a chance to promote objectives of academic autonomy as well as a means to foster cooperation between European universities. In the Czech Republic, it has resulted in a sharp increase of student and academic mobility but has also been integrated into the mobilization of a part of the Czech academic community resisting pro-market reform projects proposed by the government. The second program articulates Europeanization through the neo-liberal reinterpretation of a Knowledge-Based Economy. It is represented by fragments of Czech academia and members of the policy apparatus who treat education as a commodity and knowledge as an intellectual property. Failing as a large-scale governmental reform, the second program has nonetheless resulted in incremental changes that have re-shaped Czech universities under the policy practices of new public management and through a diffusion of competition principles at both institutional and personal levels. Rather than attributing the contradictory effects of Europeanization to the particularities of Czech policy environment, this paper suggests that contradictions are inherent to European HE policies that oscillate between two dominant visions – the Europe of Knowledge introduced by the Sorbonne declaration (1998) and the Knowledge-Based Economy upheld by the Lisbon Strategy (2001).