FACES AND PLACES: Higher education in Ukraine: no Bologna yet! (07/17/05)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Higher education in Ukraine: no Bologna yet!

When Prof. Mark von Hagen of Columbia University went after higher education in Ukraine, he hit on a topic close to my heart. Speaking at the sixth congress of the International Association of Ukrainian Studies (IAUS) in Donetsk, Dr. von Hagen was brilliant and blunt!

"Despite years of post-independence reform programs and proposals," he declared before some 600 scholars, "the organizations which are most critical to IUAS have failed to construct a meaningful agenda for Ukrainian nation-building and the development of civic consciousness through the development of basic scholarship and culture."

Dr. von Hagen was especially critical of Ukraine's Ministry of Education which, while providing some of the funds for the congress, is "rolling back important gains in university autonomy and academic freedom won since the end of Communist rule."

Having spent time in Ukraine as a Fulbright professor at the National University of Ostroh Academy, as well as mentoring professors from Ostroh working on higher degrees at Northern Illinois University, I can relate to Dr. von Hagen's remarks.

As an annual participant and presenter at the University of Illinois seminars organized by Prof. Dmytro Shtohryn, I have met various professors and university rectors from Ukraine over the years. I have been impressed, not so much with their academic competence, but with their hubris. Some truly believe that their universities are the best in the world. Professors and students who earn higher degrees in the United States, for example, are not recognized by the Ministry of Education in Ukraine because our higher degrees, their educators maintain, are nowhere near the equivalent of their degrees. The millions of U.S. dollars spent on various academic exchange programs with Ukraine are, as of now, largely a waste.

I applaud the comments of Olga Andriewsky, a professor of history at Canada's Trent University, who described higher education in Ukraine as "a bureaucratized, centralized, paternalistic academic culture ... Everything is about pecking orders."

As I've mentioned on these pages before, the system now in place in Ukraine is essentially the old Soviet system with academic degrees such as master, candidate and doctor. No university in Ukraine can grant a higher degree without the approval of the Ministry of Education. The candidate degree, Ukrainian educators maintain, is equivalent to our doctoral degree. Beyond the masters degree, the student need not complete any more course work; only a dissertation is required. Obtaining a candidate's degree in Ukraine means having to jump through some 30 hoops, most of which have little to do with scholarship. As in Soviet times, when a party line imprimatur was required for all research, payoffs are not uncommon. When I mentioned this sad fact at one of the University of Illinois seminars, a Ukrainian educator shouted that degree buying is prevalent in the United States as well.

Fortunately, all is not doom and gloom in Ukraine. Ukraine has joined the so-called Bologna reform movement, a process which hopes to establish a Europe-wide higher education system by 2010. This would allow students to move from country to country in Europe for the purpose of further study or employment and would provide the continent with a broad, high quality and advanced knowledge base.

The process officially started in 1999 when 29 European nations signed the so-called Bologna Declaration pledging, among other things, to adopt a system of easily readable and comparable degrees, a system of university credits, as well as the promotion of European cooperation in quality assurance. Full recognition for Ukraine depends upon adherence to the following principles: international mobility of students and staff; public responsibility for higher education; autonomous universities; student participation in the governance of higher education.

How far along is Ukraine in the process? According to a recent report issued by Dr. Per Nyborg, head of the Secretariat of the Bologna Follow-up Group, Ukraine still has a way to go. "The change from 11- to 12-year primary and secondary education as a basis for Ukrainian secondary education is an important development," the report reads. "From the Law of Ukraine on Higher Education, revised in December 2002, Bologna principles and structures can be clearly seen." There is some international mobility in that some 10,000 students from Ukraine are studying abroad and 25,000 foreign students study in Ukraine. University autonomy, however, is still limited, and there is no "clear understanding of the correlation between the degrees of bachelor, specialist and master, and between a master and post-graduate student working on a thesis."

How valid is the Ukrainian criticism of American education? If we're talking about elementary and secondary education, it is no secret that compared to schools in other developed nations, the United States is near the bottom in math and science scores on international tests. When it comes to self-esteem, however, we're No. 1. Over the years, educators committed to so-called "progressive education" have ravaged the American classroom with failed fads such as whole language reading, social promotions, invented spelling, values clarification, etc. Recent immigrants from Ukraine who send their children to American public schools have reason to be appalled at what they find. Fortunately, despite teacher union opposition, the No Child Left Behind Law (NCLB) reform movement is pushing the American educational pendulum in the other direction.

When it comes to higher education in the United States, on the other hand, universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Michigan, are among the best in the world. At the University of Chicago, my alma mater I am proud to say, 78 Nobel laureates have been faculty, students or researchers.

Will Ukraine ever achieve such heights? Of course. The national universities of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and Ostroh Academy are already moving in that direction. As their graduates take on leadership roles, and as the ossified academic bureaucrats retire, things will begin to change rather rapidly.

Ukraine's youth was in the forefront of the Orange Revolution. They will soon lead a similar revolution at the university level.

Myron Kuropas's e-mail address is: [email protected].

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