The University of Latvia was established 80 years ago and it continued to exist in all the regimes that existed during this time period. The last serious changes occurred in 1991 when the independence of Latvia was regained and the transition period to free market economics began.

Beginning from 1991 all necessary legal changes of the status of the national university were completed - the University was granted its autonomy, new Rector and other staff was elected, new laws of higher education and scientific research were adopted etc.

The University itself also started changes to adapt to the new economical and political situation. New faculties (teology and medicine) were organised, new study programmes and curricula were offered (especially in economics and law). Rather important was the tendency that the former research institutes of the Latvian Academy of Sciences began to join the University following the new understanding of the role and the place of the research organisations.

In spite of all these measures the number of the students began to decrease slowly until 1994, especially in the distance education departments.

Fig.1. Enrollment of students for successive years

To some extent it could be explained that quite a few other higher education institutions arose in the country and the young people were to prefer the University to the new institutions that declared they are ready to give very good education of the European or even the world level. It seems to be more important, however, that at that time the society as the whole did not understand the role and did not feel the need of the university type higher education as well as the necessity of the scientific research in the newly created country.

This tendency existed for not so long time. The number of the University students reached its minimum in 1993, then began to increase and in 1996 was much greater than in 1991. To 1999 the number of the students was twice as many than in 1991. It should be stressed that during this time period no new departments were opened or any revolutionary changes in the existing departments carried out, the main efforts were directed to the strengthening of the classical higher education and to adapting the curricula content to European traditions.

In the USSR the state fully financed the higher education, therefore for the most part of the society it was quite a new discovery that the acquirement of the higher education should be financed by the students themselves or by their families. However the understanding of this truth was not very difficult and as it is seen from the Fig. 1 the increase of the students in the University of Latvia was caused by the increase of the self-founded students that, of course, allowed to improve the working conditions and salaries of the University staff.

The total number of the students enrolled in all the higher education establishments in Latvia in 1999 was greater than the total number of all the graduates of secondary schools in this year, which clearly demonstrates that many persons who postponed the higher education in previous years now have decided to continue education or to acquire another speciality.

One may suppose that the surprisingly high interest in the higher education could be explained by better situation of academically educated persons in the labour market according to the statistics. From other side it is known from the labour market researches that the persons quite frequently compete for working places that traditionally were occupied by less educated persons, mainly by graduates of professional schools.

The development of the research in any University is very important for the quality of the teaching and for the level of the graduates. The research activities of the University of Latvia decreased at the beginning of 90s when the financing sources of collapsed USSR became unavailable. Later the activities began to grow but this was mainly formal impression because many institutes of the Academy of Sciences joined the University and became financially independent legal entities of the University. In 1993-1994 the research activities of the faculties staff began to grow. The growth can be characterized by the Fig.2.

This figure shows the total financing in thousends of Euro (ECU) of the research of the faculties staff in successive years by all available sources. It is clear that the increase was significant at the end of 90s.

Fig.2. Financing of research in University of Latvia in successive years. (thousends of Euro)

The story of the University serves as a case how an institution preserving its classical structure successed in the transition period.