New educational draft laws have become strong concern of the educational community and the interested public. Hence education is one of the key fields of concern of the fund “Europe XXI”, we decided to communicate about the law legislation with Olha Ajvazovs’ka, the Chairman of the management board of the Civil network “OPORA”. One of the basic concerns and action fields of OPORA is the educational policy. The main task of our interview was the development and approbation of the complex public observation in the EIT and the university admission campaign.

New and old

The draft law “About the Higher Education” should be discussed as a document that could potentially solve the problem of higher education, without comparing it with the previous law because the least was adopted when Ukraine has just become independent – and doesn’t reflect the society problems in the field of higher education.

The actual law “About the Higher Education” is the mirror of the Soviet system of supervision in the higher education. There one can find the defined place of the higher educational institution comparing with the power institutions, the actual place of the graduate and student in this system. So, the old law should rather be left in the past, and the new draft law, the future law, has to resolve the actual problems of higher education in Ukraine and to make the system of supervision and mutual relations of the higher education institution, the power bodies and the consumers of the educational services nearer to the European and the world standards.

History

The text of the draft law was rewritten many times: the outlining of the document was started when Ivan Vakarchuk was the Minister of Education, than the document was on the Ministry website, practically unnoticed, and it was changed from time to time. But, perhaps, work with the document became more efficient in the time of the Minister Tabachnyk, - then several MP’s began working with it. Maksym Luts’kyy was the head of this group consisting of seven persons.

Then, with certain procedure violations the document was registered in Verkhovna Rada. In fact, the draft law was evaluated by the group of the MP’s and submitted without the quorum of the profile committee of Verkhovna Rada. So, there was certain legal forgery of the process, perhaps, because of bad intentions of the developers.

Now it is announced that the Ministry of Education is preparing the new Law based on the above-mentioned one, and that the working group in the Ministry was created for this. The Ministry officially distanced itself from the first document because it wasn’t legally connected with the Law, though the factual connection took place.

The second law was outlined in the working group. I wouldn’t say that there are some particular improvements in it. Concerning the target audience, it has basically the same negative position. Personally I have no idea, how did they bought the deans for they had positive attitude to all this and weren’t particularly active except the minor cases. It is not as public, concerning the time limits. The renewed draft is still on the website of the Ministry on July, 1. It was planned that the draft will be carried over for consideration till the holidays in the Parliament. The majority of experts understood that the draft law is planned to be carried over in the Parliament and adopted in the first reading to work fast after the holidays. Why so quick? Perhaps, it is the “ministry style”. The dismissals are happening on the holidays, the documents are carried out as much quickly.

Mismatches

If we consider the draft law, i.e. the variant proposed by Luts’kyy, registered in the Verkhovna Rada, and draws some conclusions, then it was aimed at several issues. The first is public one. In the note to the draft law it was stated that there will be given more costs on the support of the universities, but in the text of the draft this thesis is stated somewhat generally.

It was told on public about the autonomy of the universities, the change in administrative system and decentralization expressed in several aspects. First is the study plans and the program plans. So, the universities couldn’t influence the Ministry policy in this field. Second is the system of deans’ elections, or the university administration. On the contrary to the actual law, there is a limit of terms when the dean can work on this job. This restriction included all universities, both state and private. We can say that this is the narrowing of the autonomy, because the private universities should make decisions upon this issue themselves. If the dean is a good manager, why should he withdraw after only two terms?

What about the students: there was a lot of public resistance because of the suppression of this consumers of educational services and the target audience of the draft law because of the possible changes in the prices, e.g. the possibility to change the price according to the inflation level – considering the odd indexes definition. There can be certain per cent for the correction of the price, but it isn’t clear, on what it depends – not only on the statistics because the terms are different.

One more innovation was the external independent testing as the evaluation system for the graduates. But along with this we could see the deciding point  got in the university, - it means the obligatory implementation of the exams. The testing as the evaluation system for the graduates is excluded because of this extra exam. It meant that the exam would have the blocking right. If the graduate had good grades, good average score of school certificate and the IET, but he was lowered at the internal university exam, he would have no possibility to take part in the contest no more. Such situation was last year on the creative contests.

Qui bono

Such law is the profit for the power institutions due to the control at the universities - in the administrative system, in finances, in the state demand division, in the license issuing. The absence of loyalty to the government from the dean is impossible – if he doesn’t want to lose his job. There is the appropriate example in Donets’k National University where the new dean was chosen according to all new procedures but he wasn’t allowed to perform his work and to take his job. So, if there is a control from the Ministry, it is always possible not to sign the contract with the new dean.

The Law about Education and the Main Law

We had an idea to appeal to the Constitutional Court for the graduation privileges. It is the formation of different groups that can graduate to the university on different conditions, but we have the Constitution with the equal rights. But is it impossible to turn this into reality. Besides, the rise of tuition fee is the presupposition for lesser access to the education. The privileged categories, the invalids, need the education – together with access to it. They are given the student ID without the actual access. There are no conditions. The blind, the deaf can’t study in the ordinary groups. Not all the universities are properly equipped, they have no material and technology ground, no books, no tutors who understand how to deal with these students. As a result, such students come to the university just on the exams, drive into the cabinets and they get the marks. On one hand, it is the human sorrow. On the other hand, there are no conditions to get the education. There are conditions to get the diploma; there are no conditions to get the education. I can’t speak about the unconstitutional laws, I can say directly: if it is more expensive, than it is less possible. For the last 10-15 years we have this situation even without the draft law.

The Bologna Process?

The key problems are undecided, no matter in what form will the draft law be put into consideration. It moves us forward to the Bologna process just like its absence. On one hand, there are certain terms, the term “specialist”, on other hand there is the renaming to master and PhD. But there is absolutely no ground to say that it corresponds with the education in the countries working in one educational space joined to the Bologna system. It is just renamed reality.

Besides, the European education standard presupposes the obligatory scholarly endeavor. The tutor is inconsistent if he retells the books or the web materials, or uses the yellowish cards 20 years old for the lectures. He is not the carrier of the scholarly knowledge; he retells the information that can be learned during self-education. He doesn’t provoke the wish or possibility of student to develop. He is not the scholar, he is just the tutor. On the contrary to European universities where the tutor is motivated for the scholarly endeavor, we lose and will lose more. The time sheet is too big, we have no time and no money for the full-scale researches.

“Good” and “bad”

We come to a conclusion that any law won’t lead to the systematic changes in the education, particularly the higher education, or the access to the education – the constitutional right of every Ukrainian citizen – if there won’t be any changes in the system of relations.

This system changes between the legal body, the leading partner in this joint, and the university. The latter is less dependable on state if it has the possibility to collect money from the people, from businessmen. This is not to be decided by the draft law. The second question is the administration. If all the vertical is under the Ministry of education or wishes of the concrete minister, we will never get the proper university. This is the issue of the contents. The international standards presuppose that the university has its own intellectual product on the international education services market, for which the students pay their money. They are ready to pay for knowledge.

The pessimistic way of acting – is when the law will be adopted as it is formulated now, with minor changes. We won’t have worsening of situation but we won’t have improvements either. The stagnation will continue. We move nowhere. But this is not the education and getting the diploma. The situation in the country depends on the higher education, the economics, the labor market. We are witnessing the decline of the intellectual possibilities in the country. If it will go on, Ukraine won’t be competitive neither in politics nor in economics. It’s distressing because earlier there were a lot of foreign students here. If we say optimistically, I hope there will be a sound consciousness in the Party of Regions where are other people who will support it, - and the draft law will be changed in the part of students’ rights. They have their own position on the draft law. Secondly, we should change the administration system, providing the full-scale autonomy to the universities and changing the finance system. It doesn’t mean full replacement of the state with the commercial, but the businessmen involved to the financing. There are no countries who coped with the educational development without this.

Alternative

Now we can say that the draft law situation will be resolved in September. There are few political issues, there is an alternative draft of Yuri Miroshnychenko, that is considered to be more progressive and democratic among the progressive community. It was registered long ago but it wasn’t put into consideration till the “internal infightings” on the question, which will be the first. There is a serious support of the draft by Miroshnychenko, perhaps, less public, because the negative stuff is transmitted and percepted more easy.

for the Fund "Europe ХХІ"