A. Vanags, M. Hansen, 2005 - BICEPS

end we first designed an interview template which contained a mix of qualitative and
quantitative questions. Thus, some of the questions sought direct opinions on issues such
as:
why an institution emerged
whether there were certain gaps to be filled
the future outlook of the sector
the attitude of government to the private sector
the quality of the service offered by the private sector, and so on.
Other questions were more factual ones related to size and quality of faculty,
characteristics of the student body, facilities, and the number of programmes offered.
We also asked institutions to assess on a scale of 1 (low/nothing) to 7 (very high) how
they perceive competition in general in the educational sector, how they perceive
competition with the public sector and with the private sector, respectively, how
important they find the private sector in their country, the degree of collaboration with
institutions in their country and abroad and the size of their fees compared to other
private institutions and to the public sector, respectively.
In each country 5 or 6 institutions were chosen for interviews. Institutions were selected
loosely on the following criteria: Big, in terms of student body and diverse, in terms of
programmes, ie not just a selection of various business schools. For Lithuania,
institutions from the three major cities, Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipeda were chosen since
this country, in contrast to Estonia and Latvia, does not exhibit a massive concentration in
the capital (Vilnius). For Belarus, the capital, Minsk, is home to by far most of the
institutions but to choose eg one institution from another city was simply impractical. The
interviews were conducted in the autumn of 2004 and the spring of 2005, typically with
the rector or vice-rector of the institution and often in the presence of more staff.
Interviews typically lasted 1 – 1½ hours.
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