This emotionally charged headline grabbed the attention of Ukraine-watchers worldwide after the Dec. 9 press conference by the university’s president, Serhiy Kvit.
That day, Kvit declared that Ukraine’s Minister of Education, Dmytro Tabachnyk, had mounted a concerted administrative attack on Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA) by refusing to approve its statute, and by denying approval of NaUKMA student admission rules for 2011.
All of this was being done in tandem with the tabling in parliament of a new draft Law on higher education that requires an institution to have a minimum of 10,000 students in order to be a university – NaUKMA’s student body counts just over 3m500.
Although I have strong emotional, professional and intellectual ties to NaUKMA, frankly, a more correct version of the circulated email subject line would have simply read: “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy under threat!”
Closure is unlikely because it would require special effort on the part of the government and Presidential Administration (including having to supply uncomfortable explanations to the international community).
Tabachnyk’s goal is not to close NaUKMA, but rather to control it: ministry’s press service declared that the NaUKMA draft statute includes various provisions that deviate from the ministerial norm for such documents, and that the English proficiency requirement that the university insists upon for new student entrants is unique in Ukraine, and therefore unacceptable.
Tabachnyk’s goal is not to close NaUKMA, but rather to control it: in its response to Kvit’s press conference, his ministry’s press service declared that the NaUKMA draft statute includes various provisions that deviate from the ministerial norm for such documents, and that the English proficiency requirement that the university insists upon for new student entrants is unique in Ukraine, and therefore unacceptable.
Apparently, their goal is to forbid all of the differentiating factors that allow NaUKMA to stand out among Ukraine’s universities. Once that happens, the “problem” will solve itself.
So what’s the “problem” with NaUKMA?
Well, it’s the only university in Ukraine with two languages of instruction – Ukrainian and English – and this makes it not only different, but highly Westernized. Its students read English texts in the original; they travel regularly to Europe and North America; their world view is broader because they have access to greater amounts of information (including through the Internet).
NaUKMA is also a place where new educational initiatives initiate: it was the first university in Ukraine to offer standardized entrance tests, the first to adopt a liberal arts approach to education with students selecting their own courses; the first to offer two-year master’s programs, and most recently, the first to introduce structured Ph.D. programs that involve students working with multiple supervisors (including at least one from abroad), publishing in international journals, presenting at international conferences, etc. Not to mention that NaUKMA has a unique corruption-free reputation – an achievement that very few other Ukrainian universities can boast.
Given the consistently high demand for NaUKMA graduates among employers (a testament to the university’s academic excellence), one would think that at least some of the university’s innovations might be hailed as examples by Ukraine’s new “reformist” government.
But clearly memories of NaUKMA student strikes during the Orange Revolution die hard, and although the university is often praised publicly (e.g. Vice Premier Boris Kolesnikov has repeatedly identified NaUKMA as the best university in Ukraine), privately, politicians seem to hold different opinions of this prestigious institution.
It is ironic that on the day the NaUKMA leadership publicly revealed that a subtle administrative war was being waged against it by Tabachnyk, the minister was actually promoted by President Yanukovych to head the new Mega-Ministry of Education and Science, Youth and Sport.
Apparently the top priority of the leadership of this new ministry will be to reform the university system in Ukraine
Apparently the top priority of the leadership of this new ministry will be to reform the university system in Ukraine, supposedly (according to Tabachnyk) with a view to “increasing university autonomy, and bringing Ukraine’s educational system into conformity with the Bologna process.”
A cursory reading of the draft new law reveals that nothing could be further from the truth! University autonomy, a basic principle enshrined in the Bologna declarations that Ukraine signed in 2005, and a “crucial success factor for European universities,” according to the 2009 Prague declaration of the European University Association, includes organizational, financial and academic dimensions.
A modern university has to be able to decide freely how it organizes its departments and programs, what subjects/programs are taught within its walls, what its student admissions criteria are to be, and whom it will hire to teach those students (i.e. to independently decide whether to recognize academic degrees issued by other universities).
None of these rights are provided for under Tabachnyk’s new draft law. On the contrary, administrative control over universities will be increased.
Until recently, limited university autonomy was enjoyed by NaUKMA, and it seems to have led to admirable results. Unlike other universities, NaUKMA offered educational programs in subject areas not specified by official Ministry documents, such as Business Administration, Public Health Administration, Social Work, and others; whereas other universities continued with corrupt entrance practices, NaUKMA instituted standardized testing; whereas other institutions strictly abided by Ukraine’s bureaucratic rules regulating the hiring of western Ph.D’s, NaUKMA opened its doors to them, and launched Western-model structured Ph.D programs.
The Minister’s new law will strictly regulate all organizational, staffing, financial, and educational programming issues related to university management (while proclaiming autonomy!), and simultaneously the deviance represented by NaUKMA will be quashed.
By the end of January, if Tabachnyk has his way, all of these uncomfortably autonomous deviations from Ukraine’s conservative academic norms will become history. The Minister’s new law will strictly regulate all organizational, staffing, financial, and educational programming issues related to university management (while proclaiming autonomy!), and simultaneously the deviance represented by NaUKMA will be quashed.
Although I certainly hope I’m wrong, the following scenario seems increasingly likely: during the inter-semester holiday period, while potentially rebellious students will be away from campus, Kvit will be removed from office by ministerial decree and an external “acting rector” will be appointed “temporarily.”
Simultaneously, the university’s budget will be increased dramatically, so as to be able both to answer critics who may seek to protest the leadership change and also to provide the acting rector with a very effective coercive instrument: the professional lives of academic staff who do not agree to tow the new leader’s line will be made exceptionally difficult, while colleagues who are loyal will be provided raises, bonuses, etc. Whether this tactic will work in the case of NaUKMA will have to be seen.
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy is being neutralized because it is too autonomous, too Western-oriented, too successful, too uncorrupted, too innovative for Tabachnyk.
To observers on the outside, watching events unfold during the coming weeks at NaUKMA, one message must be clear: Kyiv-Mohyla Academy is being neutralized because it is too autonomous, too Western-oriented, too successful, too uncorrupted, too innovative for Tabachnyk. Instead of being used as an example of successful reform, the NaUKMA experience is in danger of being extinguished, and if this happens, Ukraine will have lost one of its few truly European educational institutions.
