Maia Chankseliani – författare

What Happened to the Soviet University? explores how one of the largest geopolitical changes of the twentieth century—the dissolution of the Soviet Union— triggered and inspired the reconfiguration of the Soviet university. The reader is invited to engage in a historical and sociological analysis of radical and incremental changes affecting sixty-nine former Soviet universities since the early 1990s. The study departs from traditional deficit-oriented, internalist explanations of change and illustrates how global flows of ideas, people, and finances have impacted higher education transformations in this region. It also identifies areas of persistence. The processes of marketisation, internationalisation, and academic liberation are analysed to show that universities have maintained certain traditions while adopting and internalising new ways of fulfilling their education and research functions. Soviet universities have survived chaotic processes of post-Soviet transformation and have self-stabilised with time. Most of them remain flagship institutions with large numbers of students and relatively high research productivity. At the same time, the majority of these universities operate in a top-down, one-man management environment with limited institutional autonomy and academic freedom. As the homes of intellectuals, universities represent a duality of opportunity and threat. Universities can nurture collective possibilities, imagining and bringing about different futures. At the same time, or perhaps because of this, the probability is high that universities will continue to be perceived as threats to governments with authoritarian inclinations. One message to take away from this monograph is that the time is ripe for former Soviet universities to loosen their last remaining chains.

What Happened to the Soviet University? explores how one of the largest geopolitical changes of the twentieth century—the dissolution of the Soviet Union— triggered and inspired the reconfiguration of the Soviet university. The reader is invited to engage in a historical and sociological analysis of radical and incremental changes affecting sixty-nine former Soviet universities since the early 1990s. The study departs from traditional deficit-oriented, internalist explanations of change and illustrates how global flows of ideas, people, and finances have impacted higher education transformations in this region. It also identifies areas of persistence. The processes of marketisation, internationalisation, and academic liberation are analysed to show that universities have maintained certain traditions while adopting and internalising new ways of fulfilling their education and research functions. Soviet universities have survived chaotic processes of post-Soviet transformation and have self-stabilised with time. Most of them remain flagship institutions with large numbers of students and relatively high research productivity. At the same time, the majority of these universities operate in a top-down, one-man management environment with limited institutional autonomy and academic freedom. As the homes of intellectuals, universities represent a duality of opportunity and threat. Universities can nurture collective possibilities, imagining and bringing about different futures. At the same time, or perhaps because of this, the probability is high that universities will continue to be perceived as threats to governments with authoritarian inclinations. One message to take away from this monograph is that the time is ripe for former Soviet universities to loosen their last remaining chains.

What Happened to the Soviet University? explores how one of the largest geopolitical changes of the twentieth century—the dissolution of the Soviet Union— triggered and inspired the reconfiguration of the Soviet university. The reader is invited to engage in a historical and sociological analysis of radical and incremental changes affecting sixty-nine former Soviet universities since the early 1990s. The study departs from traditional deficit-oriented, internalist explanations of change and illustrates how global flows of ideas, people, and finances have impacted higher education transformations in this region. It also identifies areas of persistence. The processes of marketisation, internationalisation, and academic liberation are analysed to show that universities have maintained certain traditions while adopting and internalising new ways of fulfilling their education and research functions. Soviet universities have survived chaotic processes of post-Soviet transformation and have self-stabilised with time. Most of them remain flagship institutions with large numbers of students and relatively high research productivity. At the same time, the majority of these universities operate in a top-down, one-man management environment with limited institutional autonomy and academic freedom. As the homes of intellectuals, universities represent a duality of opportunity and threat. Universities can nurture collective possibilities, imagining and bringing about different futures. At the same time, or perhaps because of this, the probability is high that universities will continue to be perceived as threats to governments with authoritarian inclinations. One message to take away from this monograph is that the time is ripe for former Soviet universities to loosen their last remaining chains.

What happens when people cross borders to learn and then return to the worlds that shaped them? This book follows 391 returnees from sixty-nine countries to show how international higher education reshapes how individuals see, judge, and engage in their societies. Drawing on vivid cases from education, health, poverty, and democratic life, it traces five generative mechanisms-reflexive agency, civic understanding, knowledge translation, transnational social relations, and intercultural understanding-through which comparative experience becomes consequential after return. Grounded in critical realism, transformative learning, and transnational theory, the book introduces a new framework centred on presence: a sustained relational stance through which individuals hold their ground under constraint. It offers an empirically rich account of how international study widens interpretive horizons, sustains engagement, and keeps democratic and institutional possibility open even in settings marked by inequality, fragility, and uncertainty. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

What happens when people cross borders to learn and then return to the worlds that shaped them? This book follows 391 returnees from sixty-nine countries to show how international higher education reshapes how individuals see, judge, and engage in their societies. Drawing on vivid cases from education, health, poverty, and democratic life, it traces five generative mechanisms-reflexive agency, civic understanding, knowledge translation, transnational social relations, and intercultural understanding-through which comparative experience becomes consequential after return. Grounded in critical realism, transformative learning, and transnational theory, the book introduces a new framework centred on presence: a sustained relational stance through which individuals hold their ground under constraint. It offers an empirically rich account of how international study widens interpretive horizons, sustains engagement, and keeps democratic and institutional possibility open even in settings marked by inequality, fragility, and uncertainty. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

This edited volume represents a collective contribution to the current debates on developing university research capacity.  The chapters in this volume offer empirical case studies from post-Soviet countries which share a common history, common policies and practices of higher education. These commonalities make the regional focus meaningful and analytically valid. At the same time, the case studies demonstrate divergence from the shared Soviet tradition and offer historical, sociological, and political analyses of how and in what ways universities in former Soviet countries internalised their research mission and developed the capacity to carry out this mission. This volume is the first of its kind to examine national and institutional resources, political will, and individual agency to understand how these influenced universities’ motivation, expertise, and opportunities of undertaking research since the early 1990s, and how universities changed their structures and practices under these influences. The book will appeal to students and scholars in the fields of education, sociology, political science, and economics.