Advantages and disadvantages of introducing Framework for Higher Education Qualifications

Abstract

The paper presents a critical discussion of motivation, concept, and especially methods of implementation in Polish universities, the National Qualifications Framework for the whole Higher Education domain. It presents the genesis of the Polish National Qualifications Framework against EU documents and assesses how their implementation in Polish universities was performed. The main problem is due to the fact that the National Qualifications Framework rely on the learning outcomes that are difficult to measure and objective evaluation. Critics is focused on the manner of implementation of the National Qualifications Framework in Polish higher education, and pointing to the lack of proper preparation methodology throughout the operation, as well as a huge and very costly (in terms of the enormous contribution of human labor). The paper indicates that the actions of national scale and high importance had to be preceded by an experiment on a small scale for collection of empirical evidence for of the whole reform. It was also stressed that the way to enforce the National Qualifications Framework over the entire academic community violated one of the fundamental values which is the autonomy of the universities.