It does credit to Minister of Education and Science Ivan Vakarchuk and most of his subordinates that this year the results of external testing were the key factor in student applications to higher educational institutions. However, this process has triggered certain fundamental problems, and the education ministry is now discussing the need to amend the Conditions of Applying to Higher Educational Institutions. The most criticized feature of the current document is Clause 15, which favors certain categories of entrants who have achieved great success in their professional studies, completed their studies with a gold medal, or graduated from educational institutions with a degree or a red diploma. Some critics have even called for the complete elimination of all its principles.
Their position appears to be well-grounded: the university entrance campaign has proved that the heads of many higher educational institutions are capitalizing on Clause 15 to the fullest. Let’s examine a single but very illustrative aspect of applying this part of the rules governing university admissions in 2008: the possibility of offering special conditions to graduates of general high schools that have agreements with certain higher educational institutions. It appears that this clause has given higher educational institutions a wonderful opportunity to engage in “evasive maneuvers” in order to expand the number of necessary entrants, whose fate would depend to a large extent on the results of different internal tests in one institution or another.
According to information given to The Day by the responsible secretary of the selection committee at Zhytomyr State Technological University, Andrii Panasiuk, his university has signed agreements on cooperation with 193 schools, 16 of which are located outside the oblast. Competitions in different subjects were held in these schools by the university faculty, and 1,570 participants submitted entrance applications (only 1,000 students wrote the preliminary entrance exams). There are 1,080 places for full-time students, including 390 budgeted ones.
According Yurii Biliavsky, the responsible secretary of the selection committee at Agricultural-Ecological University, AEU has signed agreements with nearly 160 schools, and subject competitions were also held there. Students sent 413 entrance applications for 1,135 places (full-time studies), including 551 budgeted places. But, as Biliavsky notes, considering that a large proportion goes for targeted category quotas, the given category of applicants were mainly invited to submit applications for contract studies.
According to the responsible secretary of the selection commission, Dmytro Vyskushenko, Zhytomyr-based Ivan Franko State University, which has places for 2,050 full-time students, including 564 budgeted ones, has signed agreements with 15 schools, and a competition for more than 1,000 entrants was conducted on the basis of Clause 15. Two thousand students submitted applications. All the above-mentioned universities held their own preliminary tests, but this writer was assured that the results of independent testing were the main selection criterion.
These universities have mostly reached the 40-percent quota (60 percent for some specializations) of budgeted places reserved for students on special conditions (this is also mentioned in clause 15 of the Conditions). If they didn’t reach the quota, the difference was minimal. However, the education ministry is recommending a reduction of the quota. Now most of the above-mentioned secretaries of selection committees support the elimination of the notorious clause: there will be less turmoil.
Only one conclusion is possible here: higher educational institutions had favorable opportunities to attract the necessary applicants, and they have taken advantage of these opportunities in a masterful fashion. Judging from the reaction of the education ministry, the same thing has happened in most of Ukraine’s higher educational institutions.
It is worth noting that the clause specifying special conditions for selecting graduates of preparatory courses has been widely used. In other words, the complaints of opponents of independent testing that it deprives higher educational institutions of the possibility to enroll talented students are hypocritical to the extreme. Without a doubt, the clause on the selection privileges for graduates of preparatory courses and schools with which agreements were signed should be eliminated from the rules governing selection.
There are objective reasons to explain why higher educational institutions, especially regional ones, are using a variety of maneuvers to popularize their services and their struggle for applicants. The demographic situation is the main one. As a result of the constant drop in the number of high school graduates in the Zhytomyr region, for example, there is a risk that there will not be enough applicants for higher educational institutions.
Petro Melnychuk, the rector of Zhytomyr State Technological University, emphasizes that as many talented boys and girls as possible must be helped to study in the regions because they usually don’t return from big university centers to their hearth and home. The exodus of people is obviously exhausting the human resources of various regions. Dr. Melnychuk thinks that the principles behind clause 15 of the Conditions should be regarded as sources of corruption during enrollments in higher educational institutions.
There is also an urgent need to regulate the question of enrollment deadlines universities. Like last year, this year some universities and academies fiddled with them. The division of higher educational institutions into categories that have different deadlines for submitting documents and enrolling should remain in place.
But the optimal scheme for registering enrolled students, at least for full-time studies, would be as follows: there should be one day set aside to announce the decisions of selection commissions at institutions with national status about their recommendations on the enrollment of students for budgeted or contract forms of study. From that date, students must be given five days to supply original documents envisaged by the selection rules. After this five-day deadline expires in a certain period, the same day this category of higher educational institutions must announce its decision on student enrollments. Only after this date the decision on student enrollments should be taken in higher educational institutions with different statuses and accreditation levels. This is the only way to regulate the determination of student enrollment and to avoid manipulations of lists of enrolled students and attempts to acquire personal profit.
