Higher education and knowledge in Slovak political life

Thesis

This research focuses on the promise that expanding education and scientific progress will enhance social harmony. It explores this question in elite interviews with Slovak politicians, analysing their answers through the use of critical phenomenology and messy approaches, with an emphasis on active reflexivity. The issues are presented in a broader historical context, accounting for current political and educational challenges, and institutional structures. Participants’ experiences from interviews are complemented with educational biographic data of Slovak politicians. The first part of the research focuses on the relationship between education and political life. A compiled database of the educational biographical data of politicians was used to map the Slovak educational cleavage within political representation, confirming the thesis of diploma democracy (Bovens & Wille, 2017). However, participants reject the simplified binary division of people with and without HE. Hence, the research moved to explore the absolute and relative contributions of education to political participation. It uncovered nuanced ways that certain educational experiences in combination with affluent background and the associated predispositions, help individuals to accumulate advantages that place them in proximity to political power. The research introduces the concept of higher education immersion, which shows the impact of educational hierarchies on stratifying access to transformative higher education-related experiences and through that limit space for self-formation. In the second part of the dissertation, the relationship between knowledge and political life is explored, mapping various rationalities used to justify policies. The dissertation identifies the need to rethink the relationship of science to policy and the need to critically reflect on the limits of public reason in the context of confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect, and social media.

Authors: Bílik, M

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-00zkreory
• Type of award: Mst taught course
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: critical phenomenology; student self-formation; HE2022; institutional design; Slovakia; interviews; higher education; political participation; HE; case study
• Subjects: Education