UKRAINE
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Why Ukraine’s universities need more internationalisation

At a time when the war is still going on, but Ukraine can already claim a moral victory, when we have the attention of the entire world and see the beginnings of a new global security system, it is vital that we state firmly that this war should accelerate or finalise all the major reforms under way in the various spheres of Ukrainian public life.

We remember very well how, after the Revolution of Dignity and at the beginning of the undeclared Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014, as volunteers and activists, members of the academic community returned to work or study in the post-Soviet realities of their higher education institutions.

Today, Ukraine must ensure quality improvements in its higher education and scientific research. So it is necessary to remind people of what the priorities are for change.

Autonomy and integrity

First, higher education institutions need full financial autonomy. That means the actual transfer of responsibility for the quality of education, teaching and research from the state (as it was back in Soviet times) to universities themselves.

It is important that financial autonomy accompanies academic autonomy so that universities can become fully autonomous. Full self-governance of higher education institutions is the only way we can create high-quality universities. The question should be ‘autonomy for what?’ instead of ‘autonomy from what or from whom?’

High-quality Ukrainian universities that are globally competitive can emerge only if real reputational capital is created. That is, only if reputational capital becomes the main precondition for the successful development of Ukrainian universities. This will influence the taking of important decisions and the possibility of attracting more resources. Developing reputational capital also goes hand in hand with academic integrity.

Quality assurance

We also need to ensure that quality assurance is an institutional policy and responsibility. As autonomous institutions of higher education, Ukrainian universities will be able to address all the quality assurance issues which are raised by the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance in the framework of the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG 2015). These external quality requirements must be implemented.

At the same time, it should be understood that in Ukraine implementation takes place within the framework of university autonomy and a potentially unique internal culture.

Moreover, we need to admit that the current process of accreditation is not able to meet all the requirements needed to boost quality, such as the implementation of inner systems of quality assurance, the role of the humanities component as part of civic education and the accreditation of PhD structured programmes.

Culture, history and language are part of the humanities component and are highly sensitive.

In the new reality of the Russian war against Ukraine, the universal and exclusive use of the Ukrainian language (ie both in and out of the classroom) is becoming a moral issue in Ukrainian universities, although English and European Union languages are encouraged for the purpose of internationalisation.

Furthermore, the difficulties surrounding the accreditation of educational and research programmes are driven by the complexities associated with assessing the research component of such programmes.

In fact, in many postgraduate schools in Ukraine, insufficient attention is paid to teaching and in universities the opposite is true, given that the Soviet system separated teaching and research. There is therefore a need to do more to integrate teaching and research.

Another important factor is that our understanding of the types of higher education institutions in Ukraine needs to be broader. The above-mentioned requirements for obligatory research should not be required for all universities.

We should also address what the Western system identifies as teaching universities. The latter are focused on the personal advancement of their students or described as working closely with the labour market.

And when it comes to internationalisation, this should be perceived not as a bureaucratic ‘external’ requirement to boost quality, but as an important opportunity to be contextually rooted at the global level. That means that the intensification of international academic cooperation and extended learning and use of foreign languages, particularly building an English environment in Ukrainian universities, must become a priority.

Excluding Russia

Finally, in response to the Russian invasion, Russia needs to be excluded from the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and Bologna Process, both at the state and institutional levels. As a result of state propaganda, Russian universities have ceased to be centres of critical thinking and few intellectuals in the country have protested against the crimes against humanity that the Putin regime has perpetrated.

We need the EHEA’s support in the aftermath of this invasion so that we can become more active, influential and competitive members of the EHEA. That means greater financial support for Ukraine to develop its higher education system so that it can distance itself from the post-Soviet world, modernise and become more embedded in the international system.

The Ukrainian system also needs to change and adopt a new attitude towards higher education and scientific research since it is only by creating genuine possibilities for the development of high-quality new knowledge, educating future leaders and specialists, implementing innovations and the conditions for creating intellectual ecosystems that we can create real prospects for the development of Ukrainian society.

That goes hand in hand with a tangible increase in academics’ salaries, capital investment in science and the creation of the necessary legislative basis for academic development, starting with financial autonomy.

Ukrainian higher education institutions still have a long way to go on the path to greater internationalisation and globalisation. To do this, they must rid themselves of the post-Soviet traits that remain and complete the reforms that they have begun. The main goal is to enable Ukrainian universities to become more autonomous, powerful and responsible.

Serhiy Kvit is head of the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance of Ukraine and a professor of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine. He was formerly the minister of education and science in Ukraine.