ovdje - Hrvatsko filozofsko društvo

postulates, this is where the state’s sphere of influence ceases. Therefore,
this is the case of a different function of the goal: on the one hand profit,
and on the other social. Additional problems arise if we insist only on one
goal: eventually the negative side effects are increasingly produced.
History teaches us that every ruling economic theory and the derived
economic policy aimed to reform education according to their canons.
However, while previous reforms have come upon resistance, active or passive,
the education reform, especially of higher education, in the neoliberal
age has been taken for granted a. Except some individuals and their public
statements, a huge part of the academic community was wholeheartedly
engaged in reforming the reformed, emphasising “international competitiveness”
and the “European dimension in the higher education system”, all
for the sake of “facilitating employment of citizens”. The ease with which
these reform postulates were accepted by the academic community can
be compared only with the uncritical acceptance of neoliberalism as the
broadest concept of living and working conditions by politics, regardless
of whether it declares itself as right or left, conservative or social-democratic.
In the neoliberal age, business rhetoric has entered on a large scale
into Croatian higher education institutions. There are talks on “entrepreneurial
university”, “competitiveness”, “mobility” and “employability”, on
“privatisation” and “commercialisation”, on investing in “human capital”.
However, almost paradoxically and despite the rhetoric, the separation of
the university and the economy is growing. All this has led to the restructuring
of the curricula. In many ways, the “Bologna reform” is a logical
objectification of the neoliberal ideas.
Therefore the author presents and discusses the hypothesis that the
neoliberal paradigm destroys the millennial academic tradition based on
the independence of science and the common good, and the opportunism
of the administrators (the Ministry) and the political business cycles (the
Government) make the size and structure of the higher education budget
questionable, to say the least. The auxiliary hypothesis is: the penetration
of the neoliberal into Croatian higher education institutions has divided the
academic community on those (the minority) who have adjusted the area
of institutionally permissible (or sometimes even impermissible) according
to their personal needs, making the material (profit) the primary goal, and
others (the majority) for whom scientific excellence, moral and ethics are
first and above all.
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