“Academic mobility in Ukraine’s education system is rising”

Yulia SEREDA holds a Ph.D. in sociology and works as a researcher for the department of monitoring research of social and economic transformations at the Institute of Economics and Prognostication, the Ukrainian National Aca­demy of Sciences. In her contest essay Sereda outlined the new challenges that await the researchers of social reality. She shared with The Day her ideas concerning these challenges and the current situation in education and in the country in general.

In your essay you write that individuals with a higher level of formal education do not always enjoy higher incomes in comparison with their less educated peers, even when it comes to developed countries, with favorable economic conditions and a promise of social lifts.

“Education can help increase the income, but it is not the main factor, especially in the post-Soviet countries. Education has a higher role in defining incomes in deve­loped economies, with a lesser pola­rization of the population by income, as well as in the countries with a smaller proportion of individuals with college or university degrees. For instance, in Western Euro­pe the proportion of population with degrees is considerably lower than in this country. The leveling of the education factor is a matter of education quality, as well as a matter of excess of graduates. That is why education often fails to work as a social lift. In West European countries, every step up the education ‘ladder,’ starting with secon­dary school, adds a considerable amount to an individual’s income, whereas in this country the diffe­ren­ce is very small.”

You can very often come across bank tellers with a Master’s degree, can’t you?

“It can be accounted for by the fact that education is easily available, there is a lot of free or cheap education, especially for foreigners. A European degree means a totally different level of quality, of course. In Ukraine I have met fo­reign students who managed to work all the way through to graduation exams without even knowing the language they were supposed to have been speaking all four years of studies.”

Speaking of the string of reforms that were carried out recently, how would you describe the do­mi­nant social sentiment towards the new legislative initiatives?

“Reforms are always opposed since the result is never immediately visible. This is normal. Today, government’s efforts should focus on raising the trust in the authorities’ social and economic policies. Speaking of the institute of education, I think the best present-day development is the increase in acade­mic mobility. Now students can work for their degrees abroad, they are becoming international, so to speak. But there is a problem: it is much harder to nostrify a foreign degree in Ukraine than, say, a Ukrainian degree in Europe. And this factor can induce our graduates to stay abroad. Besides, not all foreign professions can be found in Ukraine’s index.”

Today we can well speak of society’s overall loss of trust in go­vernment. How can this situation be altered?

“The best way to increase the trust is via systematic provision of information to the population, and the transparency of governmental policies. Now, Ukraine is often compared to Georgia. For one, over a short period Georgia was able to considerably decrease the level of corruption. First of all it was due to close control and the change of attitude towards corruption – and this takes efforts both on the part of the government and society.”

A sociologist is, among all, a weather chart maker in terms of social climate. What is your forecast for the next five years?

“The next five years will not see a cardinal change in political elites, and there will be no new personas in the government. Politics will still be wavering between Europe and Russia. However, the economic si­tuation can sharply worsen in the fall, after Euro-2012 soccer championship and the [parliamentary] election. The regime will do its best to try to keep back all the negative tendencies, but it will succeed in doing so only until a certain moment. After that we can face a new wave of the crisis. However, our society has already been tempered by the previous cri­ses, and the research testifies that the population’s previous experience can mo­derate the negative processes.”