Rethinking Neo-Institutionalism or Does Diversity Matter in Higher Education
Rethinking Neo-Institutionalism or Does Diversity Matter in Higher Education

Summary/Abstract: The present paper analyses some recent trends in the development of higher education in post-totalitarian Bulgarian society within the theoretical framework of neo-institutionalism. It is focused on three significant institutional changes: development of the specialized higher education schools in the direction of incorporating the university model; emergence of the private sector; introduction of structural elements and practices transferred from other educational systems, such as Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and university quality assurance systems. The paper argues that the institutional development of higher education in the countries of the former socialist block provides additional evidence for justifying the need and usefulness of mutual complementing and reassessment of the ideas of the early institutional theory and the neo-institutionalism. Such research perspective is regarded as richer and more heuristic because it allows grasping different aspects of the institutional development and contributes to understanding both similarities and country peculiarities in the development of higher education systems and institutions. The perspective is designated as an open institutionalism. The attribute ‘open’ means that the early institutional theory and the neo-institutionalism have different descriptive and explanatory powers for different problems and that there is not only one combination between them.

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