Ukraine is seriously behind in transforming its education system. The changes introduced five years ago with the first team of the Ministry of Education and Science under the leadership of Hanna Novosad and her team began to show the first results two years later.
However, the covid pandemic and the outbreak of a full-scale war hampered the results, including the introduction of a funding formula for institutions. Serhiy Babak, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Education, Science and Innovation, expressed this view at the discussion ‘Ukrainian Education in Time of War: Challenges and Opportunities’ organised by LB.ua in cooperation with EFI Group as part of the New Country special project.
According to him, the funding formula will make ‘higher quality universities’ richer, while lower quality universities will receive less funding. If this formula had not been suspended, some universities would have ceased to exist, said Babak.
The National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences recently conducted a study on how many students Ukrainian universities have. The MP explained that the QS World University Ranking considers universities with less than 5,000 students to be micro-universities. They are not included in the rankings.
In Ukraine, 67% of universities have less than 5,000 students. Of the 200 state-funded universities under the jurisdiction of the UN and the Ministry of Culture, 50 have fewer than 1,000 students.
"There are 40 universities under the Ministry of Education and Science with less than a thousand students and branches. They should be simply closed... I think this has never been publicly discussed: at the beginning of the invasion, around the beginning of March, I suggested to the Minister of Education (Shkarlet - Ed.), who was in office at the time: let's immediately purge all the rectors who went abroad. Let's introduce conditional military administrations - call them what you want, as we did with some cities and regions - this would allow us to replace them immediately,’ Babak said.
According to him, the head of one of Kharkiv's universities with 10,000 students left for Turkey. Babak added that four of the 21 university heads remained in Kharkiv at the start of the full-scale invasion. Most of them are still rectors.
‘The committee does not directly influence this, but we are trying to make some waves in that direction,’ he commented.
Babak said that ‘now the ministry's team is struggling to optimise some institutions.’
"We can argue, because I don't quite agree with the way this process is going... But now it is more difficult. Because now even an attempt to join one insignificant Kyiv university to a powerful university is facing resistance,’ Babak said.
He added that in one university, the vice-rector was paid UAH 8 million for two years of war (this is the State University of Infrastructure).
According to the chairman of the relevant committee, universities need to be optimised by having young people go abroad.
"It may be painful, it may be suicide for the ministry's team and for us politically, but it must be done quickly. Otherwise, this inadequacy will produce itself,’ the MP added.
About the speaker: Serhiy Babak is a Member of Parliament (Servant of the People), Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Education, Science and Innovation. At the time of his election, he was Deputy Director of the Centre for Marine Geology, Geoecology and Sedimentary Ore Formation of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.