Misja wpisana w zawód? Etos i status współczesnych ludzi nauki w Polsce

The article attempts to answer questions about the status and role of academic teachers and researchers in the Polish system of higher education. The crucial issue seems to be the ethos of the academic world, as well as term “ethos” itself, and the changes associated with it that changes are the result of some global processes of “liquid modernity”. Local cultural and social conditions that determine the reception, comprehension, and reproduction of intellectuals’ ethos are particularly important. Following this is the transformation of the ideological and legal environment in higher education (educational reform since 2011), which is based on market principles. The remaining problem is concerned with how, through the prism of modern ideologies of science and higher education, the role of the “man of the science” appears in collective consciousness.