Students speak: Ondřej Vocilka, second from left, thinks education should be free. Štěpán Kovařík, right, thinks tuition would raise quality. 

Before the Velvet Revolution, fewer than one in 10 Czechs went on to study at the college or university level.

Klára Matoušková, 20, is saving for a trip to England before college. It's with a broad smile that 23-year-old Jakub Feige, when asked about his summer plans, says he intends to do nothing much at all. "I'm at home," Feige says, standing in the hallway of Charles University's Philosophical Faculty in Old Town, where he studies history. Home is Jablonec nad Nisou, up north. There he'll ride his bike, he says. He'll play football.

Reforms to the system of higher education in Central and Eastern Europe display both common and unique features, with the commonality derived mostly from the similarity of tasks faced by the post-communist countries at the beginning of their transformation. One of these was the need to reform the "Soviet" or "communist" model of higher education and research.

Facts emphasized at creativity's expense, inspection office says