University Education in Ukraine in the Context of Prospects of European Integration

Modern university as the community of students and professors united by common values, scientific, educational, spiritual and cultural interests – both in Europe and in Ukraine – has traveled over distance of protracted evolutional development and revolutionary transformations, which is characteristic not only for the last decades but also for more than millennial period of its history.

Freedom is that basic value which opens wide space for development. Than what prevents the process of autonomation of the Ukrainian universities as breach to freedom? Usually civil servant becomes the addressee of claims, but even if to imagine all bureaucratic ingenuity and possibilities, all the same he does not acknowledges the principles of educational policy. Civil servant just realizes a certain course. The reason is in the aspiration of powerful elites to keep possibilities of influence on the university. Every political force, being in opposition, is clamor about the use of the administrative influence by forces which are in power, but, getting power, they start to apply those levers of influencing even more cynically. And such motion on the endless circle has taken place during all years of independence, and its obvious absurdity remains “unnoticed”. The key to the settlement of the noted problem, in my opinion, lies in the legislative plane. Till the present system of financing of universities exists, the situation can be hardly changed. There is a direct dependence between the autonomy of the university and the state order on preparation of specialists. And there are no limitations to the bureaucratic “I will give” or “I won’t give”, as well as there are no rationally grounded approaches to the volumes and directions of preparation of specialists. It is obvious that only transfer to the principle of financing - “money follows the students”- in combination with the mechanisms of giving of credits and grants on the realization of the proper projects can change the situation.

However, the most desirable scenario of development of higher education, in my opinion, can be the legislative settlement of the process of reorganization of higher educational establishments, reduction of their amount and support of competitive university centers with concentration of leading scientific and scientifically-pedagogical staff, modern scientific laboratories and renewed material and technical resources. Under certain circumstances high school, above all things due to the preparation of competent specialists, newest scientific developments and their introduction can become engine of innovative development of the society. However, for such scenario fundamentally new educational policy is needed. The philosophy of this policy ahs to be persuasion that high-quality and competitive education opens new prospects for Ukraine, increases total intellect of the nation and gross national product.

Viktor OGNEVYUK