When they want to convince us that the reform of higher education in Ukraine will have a market character, we once again feel like participants in a scam. “Under which thimble is the market reform of universities,” says a confident man in a strict and expensive suit with a Cambridge diploma in his hand. And the thimbles slide on the smooth surface.
If reasonable people decided to carry out a market-based university reform, where would they start? From a survey of business representatives, to what extent they are interested in graduates of Ukrainian universities. How can you reform anything if you do not know the real state of affairs, if there is no more or less real list of problems? When you read the victory reports about the new reform, there is nothing in them, except that there are 170 state universities and universities in Ukraine, but there should be a hundred! I wonder who told the authors of the reform that there should be one hundred of these higher education institutions, not one hundred and ten or ninety-five? It’s useless to ask. Deputy Minister of Education and Science Mykhailo Vinnytskyi has a clear propensity for the free market, judging by the fact that he received his diploma from Cambridge. And also from the fact that a reproduction of Grant Wood’s controversial painting “American Gothic” hangs in his office.
Of course, this pseudo-reform of higher education has nothing to do with the market, the free economy, or the free economy. Let’s recall how higher education in the West arose in general, and what financial basis did it have?
Higher education in the West in the form of universities was an unusual form of organization of educational centers. Unlike ancient Greece, where what we might call a higher school arose around certain philosophers, and rather resembled our permanent seminars. The political influence of these schools was small, although the history of the Socrates school in Athens suggests that the Ministry of Education at the time was no less steadfast in its demands for the education of the younger generation.
Unlike Antiquity, the European Universities of the Middle Ages arose as branches of the Church. They used the famous division of rights in Medieval Europe, which gave rise to our modern world: the church was independent in ideological and organizational law. That is why the atrocities of the same Parisian schoolchildren went down in history: the king could not punish university students – this was the privilege of the university court only. The university itself appointed and dismissed teachers, determined their academic degrees, and was completely independent of the royal power in its field of activity.
This is immediately remembered today, when the Ministry of Education determines everything, down to the length of the dresses of the staff of higher educational institutions. Programs, exams, routines, staff schedules – everything is under his restless gaze. It is clear that the Ministry gives some freedom to higher education institutions – they write their own programs, which are then approved. After all, you will not recruit so many Julius Caesars to the Ministry that they could write all the programs themselves. But this freedom is similar to the right of prisoners to freely go to the woodshed under escort. “A step to the side is considered an attempt to escape.” Then everything is clear!
It was during the Middle Ages that another tradition of modern universities was born: students themselves chose the lecturers they wanted to listen to and paid for this privilege. Yes, yes, education was self-funded. For the first time, education at the expense of a higher school arose when the Counter-Reformation began in Europe and the Jesuit order opened its universities. But even the Jesuits left the tradition of choosing a teacher unchanged: the student himself chose whom he wanted to listen to. In fact, after the independence of universities, this is the second most important principle of free education. A person can really learn only from someone whom he believes and whose opinion he is interested in. In addition, the real weight of any teacher in a higher educational institution should be determined not by his ability to lick his boss in time, or to express the necessary opinion in a friendly chorus, but by his ability to lead students and teach them to think. This does not mean at all that there should be exclusively virtuosos of words in higher educational institutions. The same famous Professor Challenger from the books of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, necessary for any university that cares about its reputation, although for students the professor is a terrible scare. But it is much worse when a university teacher is more than a simple person both in the department and in the laboratory.
Today, a paradoxical situation has developed in higher education in Ukraine: on the one hand, the cost of education has skyrocketed, largely thanks to the activities of the Ministry of Education and Science, and on the other hand, teachers’ salaries and the quality of education are not the best. Therefore, it is not surprising that long before the war, streams of Ukrainian applicants were drawn to the West. There is a continuous brainwashing from Ukraine, because it is extremely difficult to get a normal education in the country without paying astronomical money for it.
For a long time in our country, where market markers do not work, such a role is spontaneously assigned to non-market markers. Some of the most talented applicants, trying to use the budget places, led a serious competition for them. The availability of these budget places made it possible to create an imitation of market relations and select talented students. But here, too, problems arose: firstly, money for budget places is getting less and less, and secondly, since the beginning of the war, another marker has appeared: deferment from the front for those who get their first higher education.
Unfortunately, the situation in higher education is catastrophic, primarily because the number of universities is significantly decreasing, and the level of many teachers is low. In order to get a feel for what’s going on here, it’s best to turn to the only mass industry that was needed until recently, and may be needed in the future: maritime! It is difficult to imagine our lawyer or journalist capable of working in Western private companies. Unfortunately, the situation with engineers is not much better, although there are some successes here. But sailors are still in demand today, because people from Western countries do not really want to do this activity – it is too difficult. Therefore, students of these specialties are really ready to learn, fight for knowledge, experience, and strive to enter the job market under a banner where, even in the worst case, a completely different salary level awaits them.
And even here, where the need for knowledge is extremely high, the higher education system works extremely poorly. Despite the fact that the prices of education in this field have already risen to the sky, any document or certificate needs a big bundle of “green” with the face of American presidents (in addition to knowledge).
Leonid Shtekel
