engleski

Assumptions of the Successful Implementation of Higher Education Policies: Trends and Challenges

This paper will develop a discussion about the challenges and difficulties that are identified during the policy implementation processes in the field of higher education policy. Factors that affect successful or less successful policy implementation will be identified and commented as well as their mutual interaction on selected examples of higher education policies in Croatia. The paper will conclude with recommendations for modifying the process of policy design in order to ensure successful policy implementation in higher educational practice and to strengthen correlation between all relevant stakeholders in this process. Over the past several years there was a large number of reforms within the higher education system of Croatia, mostly motivated by efforts to adapt Croatian higher education to international educational policies. Policy making process in the field of higher education can be observed as intensive and quick. Important decisions are often adopted without prior analysis of the conditions and capacities of the given implementation structure. For example, the implementation of the Bologna process has brought significant changes in the structure of the education/teaching processes, but most of university teachers were not adequately prepared to implement these changes. Consequences of quick decision making in the field of educational policy are not harmless: it is a large, expensive and influential public sector. There is an increasing interest noticed among researchers internationally for the researches in the field of higher education policy design and implementation, while in Croatia such research topics are yet not represented sufficiently. Recent researches on the implementation of higher educational policy focused on two dimensions of implementation: the first relates to the success of implementation and the extent to which the policy has been implemented in practice in a way that matches the original policy design, and the other on the effectiveness of implementation and the extent to which the implementation of the policy has achieved the desired improvements in educational practice. Highlighting the factors that affect successful or less successful implementation, the new generation of researchers closely monitors the interaction of three groups of factors: those related to the characteristics of policies, people and places. The paper will propose and elaborate a theoretical framework as a basis for discussion on selected examples of educational policy implementation. From previous researches some of the assumptions of successful implementation of educational policies in practice can be singled out. First, in the policy making process the perspective of policy makers (who are more focused on the broader context of educational policies and policy objectives) and those of policy implementers (that are more familiar with local conditions and capacity, and are familiar with the principles of educational process) must be equitably represented. Second, successful implementation of education policy assumes that the implementers/participants interpreted the proposed policy as a valuable, meaningful, and better than the one that preceded it. Third, successful implementation assumes that all necessary conditions and capacities (professional and material) necessary for the immediate implementation of certain decisions in practice have been assured in advance.

higher education policy; policy implementation

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