Texto preparado para el Banco Mundial y presentado al Workshop on Higher Education Reform Priorities for Knowledge Economy Development in Latvia, Riga, February 14, 2003.
Palabras claves: governance, quality, reserach, innovation, funding
Disponible en inglés como Download file [zip](English)
Disponible en letonio como Download file [zip](Latvian)

Latvia’s Higher Education (HE) system is experiencing rapid and profound changes. Significant progress can be observed on various fronts, such as: enlarged learning opportunities; diversification of the institutional base; increased funding and diversification of funding sources; compliance with the Bologna Declaration through the adoption of a common framework for readable and comparable degrees and the introduction of undergraduate and postgraduate levels, with first degrees no shorter than 3 years and relevant to the labor market; accreditation of programs and institutions; new vision for science and technology and reorganization of system governance and coordination.
Although significant progress has been achieved in reforming and modernizing HE, new problems and issues have come up that pose also new challenges to HE institutions (HEI), governing bodies of the HE system, and society at large.
In particular, growth of a global knowledge-based economy creates great opportunities, and poses great challenges, particularly for those countries dealing with difficult transitions from centralized forms of economic organization. “To create these opportunities and navigate these risks, a country must do three difficult things. It must develop a coherent, multi-faceted national strategy for building and sustaining a knowledge-based economy. It must develop this strategy in a participatory, broad-based fashion that includes and empowers all major sectors of society, including the private sector, educators, scientists and innovators, civil society, the media and others. And it must implement this strategy in a sustained and patient fashion, carefully balancing competing priorities, difficult tradeoffs, and interdependent changes with different time horizons, all in the context of opening progressively to a fast-paced, rapidly changing, unpredictable and highly competitive global economy”1.
To bring HE in line with these expectations, policies will have to determine the system’s weaker parts, what mechanisms are not working effectively, how to implement corrective strategies, and agree on a new set of instruments for HE reform.
According to existing studies and surveys, to available data and to the results of the interviews conducted for this report, six major areas of problems and challenges for Latvia’s HE can be identified:
— Relevance of HE for national development
— Quality of teaching
— Institutional organization of HE
— Innovation system and the role of R&D
— Funding mechanisms
— Governance and coordination