Kroos, Karmo

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The Role of Universities in
Social Transformation
KARMO KROOS
C P S   I N T E R N A T I O N A L   P O L I C Y   F E L L O W S H I P   P R O G R A M
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CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY
CENTER FOR POLICY STUDIES OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE
KARMO KROOS
The Role of Universities in
Social Transformation
The views in this report are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the
Center for Policy Studies, Central European University or the Open Society Institute. We
have included the reports in the form they were submitted by the authors.  No additional
copyediting or typesetting has been done to them.
Karmo Kroos Policy Recommendations 1 
THE ROLE OF UNIVERSITIES IN SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION  
POLICY LESSONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ESTONIA 
 
(Higher) education is often perisived as one of the sectors where 
socialism made considerable progrss.  This has allowed the policy 
makers and the general public to have very high expectaions from 
the university sector: it is expected to be the “magic medicine” 
that allows Estonia to catch up with the rest of the developed 
world.   
 
Limiting the (understanding of the) role of university in social 
transformation just to its (possible) economic role, is short-
sighted.   Higher education can and does produce a mix of 
political, social, cultural and economic ends under any political 
regime.  If Estonia wants to design the optimal higher education 
system with corresponding institutional differentiation, 
curriculum (content), models of assessment, authority structures, 
teaching methods and peer networks, she has to define the 
characteristics of desired type(s) of individual and social 
order. 
 
This requires a social contract which is slow do develop and hard 
to reach as the Estonian current efforts towards this end clearly 
show.  In order to contribute towards this process, I should like 
to bring to the attention of policy-makers the policy-lessons of 
my research on the role of universities in social transformation 
and make recommendations that would allow Estonia to overcome the 
existing problems and prevent making the same mistakes again. 
 
Higher education policy lessons: 
(i) The socialist calculation debate and the quality of 
economic research in SU show how:  
• dangerous is the build-up of just one school which 
members share a common theoretical understanding, 
use similar methodology; 
• important is the presence of academic freedom, 
competing scientific communities and quality of 
their research. 
(ii) There are common characteristics about the research and 
researchers who influenced policy debates before and 
after 1989.  More particularly, advice that affected 
public policy was based on research at a very high 
international level and presented by researchers that 
had legitimacy / high academic reputation. 
(iii) The higher education policy and the method of 
instruction which was designed to prepare a large 
number of productive and rational workforce produced 
rather narrowly trained professionals who failed to 
take the SU beyond the third industrial age, the 
legitimate the soviet regime and compete with the West. 
Karmo Kroos Policy Recommendations 2 
(iv) The most important role of Estonian universities 
performed before the restoration of independence was 
preserving of the Estonian culture and reproduction of 
national elite. 
(v) Soviet underdevelopment of social sciences has left a 
qualitative effect on Estonian social scientists, their 
understanding of policy processes and possibilities to 
influence and contribute to it through research and 
teaching. 
 
Higher education policy recommendations for Estonia:  
If Estonian wants to avoid the Soviet modernisation failure and 
take advantage of the global public good of science, improvements 
in teaching, research and institutional set-up are desirable.  
Given that the quality of research and teaching tends to be 
interconnected (one has improve one get positive results in 
other), package of the following measures has to be taken:  
 
(i) Curriculum development - introduction of flexible and 
liberal art component to the higher education 
curriculum. 
  
(ii) Library development – the library collections (esp. of 
social sciences) should be audited and international 
committees established to put together a list of 
classics and most important journals in all major 
subjects that should be available in Estonian academic 
libraries.  In order to economise the initiative to 
unite the Estonian Academic Library with that of the 
University of Tallinn is supported, and matching funds 
from EU sources applied for. 
 
(iii) Human capital development with the aim of preparing 
faculty and research capacity for universities, 
increasing internal competition and diversification of 
scientific communities. Hence, Estonian government is 
encouraged to:   
• set up a scholarship fund to support graduate 
students that have been admitted to the leading 
Western programs and support program to attract 
them back to Estonia;   
• deepen bilateral relations with and agreements with 
foreign governments and organisations already 
supporting Estonian graduate students; 
• establish new agreements with foreign governments 
and academic institutions; 
• support the establishment of competitive University 
of Tallinn.   
 
(iv) International aid in the form of collaborative and 
comparative research between Estonian social scientists 
Karmo Kroos Policy Recommendations 3 
and those of ECE/FSU, Latin America, South-East Asia 
and Sub-Saharan Africa. To build up cultural capital 
and network ties about the development experiences 
elsewhere, it should be understood that international 
cooperation with EU and North America is not enough.  
It is proposed to redesign the foreign aid program that 
Estonia already has and is required to enlarge in the 
future towards the collaborative/comparative social 
science research and mentorship between Estonian 
scientists and those of recipient country. 
 
(v) International dissertation committees - there should be two 
sides to this measure: 
• Estonian graduate students undertaking Ph.D studies 
in Estonia should have in addition to a local 
advisors also foreign mentors;   
• Estonian professors should advice the graduate 
students from the countries that Estonian foreign 
aid is targeted to.  
 
(vi) Establishment of two competence centres: political 
economy, and development studies with the following 
characteristics: 
• size of 10 researchers;  
• with clear thematic focus that has importance for 
Estonia (e.g. fight against HIV/AIDS, poverty 
reduction, education and economic development); 
• duration of five years or more;  
• linked to university departments. 
 
(vii) Establishment of the system by which a position or a 
promotion is given to researchers.  As the Estonian 
scientific community is too small to ensure a non-
biased treatment of the applicants, it is recommended 
that the selection committees are made up of foreigners 
who make the decision solely based on academic merits. 
 
(viii) In addition to natural sciences, advancement of social 
science should be planned and supported in the national 
development plan - Knowledge Based Estonia.  In other 
words, social sciences should be treated as an infant 
industry and special attention needs to be given to the 
methodology of social sciences because: 
• international experience seems to suggest that 
social science that is of prime value to public 
policy tends to be empirical rather than 
theoretical, 
• descriptive work is valuable but its possibilities 
to contribute towards theory development and 
through this towards public policy are limited. 
Karmo Kroos Policy Recommendations 4 
 
(ix) In the process of linking the higher education and 
science to national economic development, support of 
disciplines connected to Estonian culture should not be 
forgotten.  Funding should definitely include but not 
be limited to the subjects that not taught / researched 
anywhere else in the world. 
 
(x) In order to improve the teaching outcome, it is 
recommended that: 
• the learning experience of students be based less 
on fact awareness and more on problem solving;  
• students are encouraged to speak up in classes; 
• the use of textbooks and their translation and 
adaptation from English into Estonian is increased 
and supported; 
• classes are taught by individuals who have earned 
their advanced scientific degrees in the given 
field. 


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