Reconfiguring higher education: discourses and practices

The chapter addresses the challenges of reconfiguring the higher education system in Croatia which has been subject to advancing privatisation and a search for financial sustainability. There has been a clear shift from a "knowledge-as-personality development" discourse to a market-oriented one, in which universities and individuals are expected to serve the demands of a knowledge-based economy. While the first "Bologna generation" has already graduated from Croatian universities, many problems remain, including an apparent policy indifference towards the "social dimension" of education and, as recent student protests have shown, a widespread refutation of the neo-liberal understanding of education as a private good