Higher Education

ISSUES OF HIGHER EDUCATION ACROSS A VARIETY OF CEU PRESS PUBLICATIONS

This compilation features books of the Central European University Press, published since its establishment in 1993, that have some relevance to higher education. After the latest release, titles in the backlist are arranged by content: contemporary topics are on top, older themes below. For more substantial information about the content and availability, please click on the covers of the book, or on the links inserted into the citations.

“In the framework of ethnolinguistic nationalism, the role of the national university’s medium of instruction is of utmost importance.”—Words in Space and Time.
“In 1943 a Bulgarian-language university was founded at Skopje. The communist Yugoslav authorities recognized Macedonian as a language in 1944. During the latter half of the 1940s this institution was gradually revived, and finally, in 1949, officially made into the first ever Macedonian-medium university.”
“The Habsburgs coaxed the Hungarian nobility to agree to the founding of a Croatian-medium University of Zagreb in 1874. In turn, the Czechs had to wait for a university in their national language until 1882 when one was established in Prague.”
“Across Central Europe, this drive to deepen and maintain monolingualism in education was a bit softened in recognition of the requirements of the supranational processes of European integration and globalization. Around forty universities were founded with English as their medium of education.”

“By the early 1930s, in the universities of the Yugoslav kingdom it was not unusual to receive clandestine flyers denouncing Yugoslavia as ‘a capitalist, more in general fascist, dictatorship,’ while at the same time shouting a ‘hurrah to the Third International, principal guide of world revolution.’”—Making Muslim Women European.
“If in 1930 there were only 7 women enrolled in the two main universities of the country, in 1938 their number increased to 36 at Belgrade University alone, out of 419 Muslim male pupils.”
“Thanks to the Gajret and Narodna Uzdanica associations’ commitment, a first cohort of Muslim female professionals became visible in Yugoslavia, challenging the Orientalist stereotype of Muslim women as silent and oppressed.”
“’Women who chose to receive a higher education in disciplines not directly connected to their primary function, motherhood, become a danger to their husbands’ and more broadly, to the entirety of God’s order—the El-Hidaje (The Right Path) association, established in 1936 in Sarajevo.”

Titles from the backlist:

“In the age of globalisation and knowledge societies, competition is imposed upon universities by external forces, including the markets, regulators and policy makers, funders and ranking agencies.”—from a book on the triple challenges of today’s universities.
“When global corporate profit depends on universities, professors and colleges and departments are drawn into the whirlpool of conflict and contention about how the fruits of science are deployed, creating challenges for academic freedom. Concepts like objectivity—always problematic—have been undermined.”
“Women are dramatically underrepresented at the top of academic positions—namely professorships. Only every fourth professor is female in Europe. Comparing the years 2011 and 2014, there is no significant change over time.”

“Only an unscrupulous enforcement of loyalty under all circumstances is compatible with the principle of all power being vested in the leader; suitable public servants must be trained, which is the aim of the current remodeling of higher education.”—dissecting an illiberal regime.
“The government’s expansion into the university sector also includes establishing the National University of Public Service, with its own school uniform and in particular an extremely high budget compared to other institutions of higher education, as well as the favorable admission numbers that have been set for it.”
“What started out in elementary and secondary education has now rolled over into higher education. Whereas the rate of governmental subsidies for public universities and colleges dwindled, the clerical institutions have suffered no such budgetary decrease.”

“The Europe that we are building is probably the most ambitious project of a culture of freedom in history. We now have a construction that represents something extremely ambitious, not only for Europe but also for the rest of the world.”—from Mario Vargas Llosa’s essay in the book on academic freedom.
“Academic freedom is too important to be left to universities to defend by themselves. Universities need to rebuild public confidence in their mission.”
“Free universities are critical to the survival of democracy itself. Free institutions nourish free thought and free thought winnows the kernel of knowledge from the chaff of falsehood. Without knowledge, based in patient verification and self-questioning, democracies are flying blind.”

Other titles on the backlist with relevance to higher education:

  • Challenges of teaching the new enlightenment in the digital age: The wisdom and experience of the CEU’s former rector merge with the co-author’s enthusiasm and know-how of the digital world.
  • Higher education in the USA; “How can a higher education system that depended so heavily on the dreams of so many millions of Americans have lost its way so completely?”—Times Higher Education.
  • "A valuable and refreshing contribution to the study of education policies in former Yugoslavia and the correlations between conflict and education in general.”
  • Institutional ambiguities and unintended consequences along the transformation of universities in the context of reflexive modernity.
  • Education is one of the revealing dimensions of the post-communist mafia state.