The National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy filed a lawsuit against Ukraine’s Ministry of Education to defend university autonomy and contemporary standards of higher education.
With a lawsuit filed on Jan. 3 in the Regional Administrative Court in Kyiv, the nation’s oldest university challenged the decision by the Education Ministry led by Dmytro Tabachnyk to cancel so-called crossover admissions into the university’s master programs. The crossover admissions allowed students to pursue a different field of study than in their undergraduate courses.
Serhiy Kvit, president of Kyiv Mohyla Academy explained in a blog that, according to recent regulations of the ministry, a graduate with a bachelor’s degree in physics can only apply to a master’s program in physics, and a history student to a master’s level studies in history. According to the same rule, a financial adviser does not have the right to apply for a program in economic theory, and a specialist in culture cannot cross over to philosophy, and so on.
“This absurd approach violates multidisciplinary and mobility strategies which are practiced in the European Union’s sphere of higher education and in Russia, and negatively influence the educational process and the quality of higher learning,” Kvit wrote in his blog. “Nowhere in the world, except in Ukraine, is a master’s program applicant asked what bachelor’s degree he or she has. What is needed is just to pass successfully entrance exams.”
The next day, after the lawsuit was filed, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport responded to Kvit on its official website.
“It is impossible to prepare a master’s in nuclear energy from a bachelor’s in philology,” the statement read. “Regarding this, the ministry emphasizes that admission to master degree’s program qualifications of individuals, who previously gained bachelor or specialist degree program qualifications in any other field of study or specialization, has no legal grounds.”
Re-established in 1991, Kyiv Mohyla Academy gained a strong reputation for its Western approach to the education process. In particular, its students had a right to choose any subjects they want to study apart from taking obligatory courses.
In 1996, the university introduced its first Western-style master’s degree program. It happened two years earlier than the same programs were launched nationwide. Since then students had an option to apply for a master’s program regardless of their specialization on the bachelor’s program. Though, in practice it meant that students had few chances to pass the entrance exams to programs that differed radically from their previous specialization. To enter a related program was much more realistic and many students used that option.
In 1998, a Soviet-style principle of direct correspondence between bachelor’s and master’s degree program qualifications was introduced in the Ukrainian universities. Kyiv Mohyla Academy, however, enjoyed its vast autonomy and managed to bypass this restriction. Things changed after Dmytro Tabachnyk was appointed educational minister in early 2010.
According to Kvit, during the last two-and- half years, Tabachnyk has attempted to eliminate the requirement of English as a second working language at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy and to rewrite the statutes of the university.
Kyiv Mohyla students took an active part in numerous anti-Tabachnyk protests which popped up all over the country with a demand to dismiss the minister famous for his controversial statements about Ukrainian history and culture and cuttings in some universities.
Since 2011, Tabachnyk’s ministry canceled state scholarships for Mohyla School of Journalism, one of the best master’s programs in media in the country. The decision was based on the fact that Kyiv Mohyla Academy does not have a bachelor’s program in journalism therefore the ministry won’t finance its master’s program.
“Masters do not come from the air,” Tabachnyk commented his decision, according to the news web site lb.ua.
The conflict between the controversial minister, despised for what many regard as his Russophile views, and the university has had dramatic moments. On Sept. 22, 2011, Daria Stepanenko, a student of Kyiv Mohyla Academy, slapped Tabachnyk’s face with a bouquet of flowers during the summit of educational ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States. University officials and students later said, however, that Stepanenko acted on behalf of herself and not the university.
At the end of 2012, the Ministry of Education issued a decree on conditions of admission to universities for 2013, which canceled the ability to “cross over” to master’s programs. The management of the university failed to negotiate amendments to the decree and went to court soon after Tabachnyk was reappointed educational minister at the end of 2012.
“The farcical reappointment of Dmytro Tabachnyk as minister of education will inevitably lead to the further degradation of Ukrainian higher education,” Kvit claimed.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Faryna can be reached at [email protected].
