Economics and Business Review

The article presents changes in the education of economists in Poland, referring
in particular to the experiences of the Poznań University of Economics and
Business and its institutional predecessors in the years 1926–2016. The aim of the article
is to analyze the contemporary framework of the university as a commercial enterprise
versus the classical integrity of the academy, related to Humboldt’s conception
of a university. The analysis includes an approach to the modelling of educational
programmes in economics, starting from serving the needs of the immediate business
environment in the inter-war period to education according to the standards of the
university which conducts research and educational activities within the system in harmony
with the Bologna Process. Proposals of an analytical approach were also formulated
in connection with dilemmas concerning the organization of a university and its
organizational units which diff er in their substance, quality and personnel. The concluding
part expresses the opinion that although transformations of academic culture
are multidirectional and complex, the present times have witnessed a final dismantling
of the classical academic culture and which takes on the shape of the corporate culture
of businesses operating in the market economy, dominated by economic calculus and
the application of competition rules. It is important to ensure that the humanistic values
of science and higher education as the mainstays of universitas are not lost in the
processes of rationalizing and reforming the structures of universities of economics.