I was extremely gratified to read the opinions of Kiev-Mohyla Academy students expressed in a poll conducted by this newspaper. Since my courses are compulsory for all political science majors, among them are undoubtedly my former or future students. Some moments were amusing, like whether or not one should start out living together before getting married. After all, I did way back when, but then every generation reinvents sex, repeats the same mistakes, and winds up in about the same place. I know my university audience well and wish its members well. After all, I have been there, too.
I was also glad to see that in the sea of venality that passes for higher education at most universities in Ukraine, they confirm that there is no venality where I work, a fact remarkable in itself given the wretched money we get: about $50 a month for a full professor, which must seem like undreamed of riches in view of the miserable student stipends that are but a fraction of that. This makes it difficult to keep the best and the brightest instructors, but the prestige and personal fulfillment of teaching at Ukraine’s best institution of higher education keeps at least some of us there. And even in a world where intellectual property has lost virtually all monetary value, the fact that there are bright young people who want to learn, stay in this country in the face of limited visible prospects in the near term, and want to help turn it around for the better, is heartening. If this country can be turned around, it is they who will do it, and, as I never cease to emphasize, they will have one whale of a battle to do so in face of the entrenched interests that will undoubtedly oppose them.
There are essentially two models of American higher education. One is the so-called multiversity with its tens of thousands of students, big teaching staff, and the ability to offer courses on just about anything if one can get twelve or so students together (want a course in Frisian Literature? Why not?). The other is the small liberal arts college with a smaller student body and faculty where the opportunities in terms of course offerings is somewhat more limited (I have students who have lobbied for years for a course in International Organizations, but we simply do not have anyone to teach it). There the students and faculty have more intimate contact, can exchange ideas on a person-to-person basis, and the multiversity model of take down information and regurgitate it is replaced by one of trying to figure things out together. Of necessity, NaUKMA has opted for the latter model, and I find myself often learning as much from my students as I hope they are learning from me. Since I live close to their dormitory, they know they are always welcome to drop by my apartment, get a signature, or ask for a recommendation. Of course, what they get is not quite a Western liberal arts education because of the environment we live in but as close to it as we can come to it under the circumstances. Everybody has to do something outside the university to keep body and soul together, which cuts into their study time and my time to prepare for classes. Yet, it is a privilege to know these young men and women, give them what I can offer, and take from them the creative thought they so freely share. Listen to them and see what this country might one day become and what it deserves to be.
