One should give the current Minister of Education and Science Ivan Vakarchuk his due. After taking up this office, where he inherited a mess not of his own making, he tackled it heroically. The mess is this year’s entrance examinations campaign, an area that is riddled with problems.
For one thing, the new entrance regulations were a hard nut to crack for prospective students, their parents, and university administrations. In some cases, officials themselves were at a loss as to who should do what, when, and how. To add insult to injury, some universities decided to do proceed along their own path and find ways to select applicants independently, some for financial reasons, and some in order to maintain a high academic level.
Ukraine’s education minister felt that this kind of arbitrary activity was out of line, and he sent an angry letter to higher educational institutions of the 3rd and 4th levels of accreditation. The first and foremost target was Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, which once pioneered entrance tests as a replacement for exams, and now refuses to abandon its variety of testing. The minister’s letter did not perturb the academy too much, and it continued to administer its own entrance tests.
The administration reasoned that they have many years of experience in this area, that this year’s entrance examinations regulations envisaged preliminary testing, and that the majority of their applicants have an invariably high academic level. For those working in the system of higher education this was no surprise-the academy has traditionally exhibited its own uniqueness in an ostentatious way. However, the Ministry of Education and Science did not take this well and called the move “inadequate conduct.”
Viacheslav Briukhovetsky, the academy’s honorary president, posted a message on the university’s official Web site, saying that “the academy’s research analytical testing center (which he heads) is implementing the research project ‘The Development of Contemporary Entrance Examination Techniques’ approved by the Ministry of Education’s Order # 1044 ‘On the Results of the Competitive Selection of Research and Development Projects’ dated Nov. 27, 2007. This project foresees an ‘Experimental Study through the Competitive Selection of Applicants to Kyiv- Mohyla Academy in the Form of Testing and with Acknowledgment of 2008 Certificates Issued by UTsOYaO (the Ukrainian Education Evaluation Center): Determining the Effectiveness of the Proposed Selection Parameters in Testing to Be Administered by Kyiv- Mohyla Academy in 2008.’”
The results of this study will be used for a research-analytical summary on entrance results and the study of various categories of students. This raises the following logical question: how was this project developed that the ministry does know (or remember) anything about it, while at the academy they began talking about it only when it had to justify its own insubordination?
This year’s educational innovations, despite all organizational shortcomings, led to something good: they stirred up the traditional system of education, exposing all its strong and weak points. There is no doubt that Kyiv- Mohyla Academy and a handful of other institutions of higher education have every reason to be considered special. However, this requires an appropriate legislative framework. In its absence, the law-does-not-apply-to-us approach not only humiliates other, no less worthy, universities, but also discombobulates the already rather confused applicants.
COMMENTARIES
Ihor PASICHNYK , the rector of Ostroh Academy National University:
“In selecting applicants, we consider their other strengths: the average score in their high school leaving certificate, participation in Olympiads, etc. However, the difficulty lies in the fact that applicants entitled to benefits have excessive privileges. This is an unwelcome innovation — in our opinion, all applicants should have equal rights. For example, if a child from Ivano-Frankivsk oblast has a test score of 200 and an applicant from the Chornobyl zone [and thus entitled to benefits by virtue of origin] has only 26, I have to sacrifice the better applicant. We need to take into account that the number of invalids has sharply increased in recent years. Finally, we are forced to interview even these privileged applicants to select candidates.
“Furthermore, it is very difficult to ascertain how many of our applicants with passing test scores will prefer our university to others in the end. So we studied the experience of Sweden, which has a similar university entrance system. In addition to the accepted students, they leave the next 40 highest-ranking applicants in reserve. Accordingly, we leave 10 reserve places for each specialty, and after the final results are known, we send our applicants letters to this effect: “Your name is listed first on the list of reserve applicants.” This will give hope to them and their parents, and to us - some assurance that we will be able to fill the remaining places with a better class of students.
“Next year the passing score will have to be revised as well. The passing score of 124 is a disgrace for Ostroh Academy! I believe it would be good if the Ministry of Education and Science allowed each institution of higher education to set its own passing score.
“In general, the entrance campaign at Ostroh Academy went well.”
Mykhailo ZHUROVSKY , the rector of National Technical University Politechnical Institute:
“It is very important for us to select applicants who have a penchant for technical activity and can become designers, engineers, etc. So we go to schools with our Olympiads and exhibitions in order to spot future Koroliovs, Sikorskys, and Liulkas, etc. According to the entrance regulations of our university, we have a certain quota for such creative students. However, I have heard from officials that next year even this exception will be taken away.
“First of all, this new entrance system is useful. It is useful in that there is monitoring of high school students’ knowledge on one and the same level. For the first time we will learn what the average level of knowledge is and be able to assess our human potential, i.e., what we are good for.
“As far as the flaws of this system are concerned, the system rests on a lack of trust in teachers and educators. They have been proclaimed as corrupt, and hence a new government institution has been created, which consists of officials who are not corrupt by definition and will take care of the entrance campaign. This worries me because it disturbs the fundamental basics of teaching, which has always been based on students’ respect for teachers.
“Second, testing is based on a momentary assessment of students’ knowledge, which involves a great degree of chance. Cumulative testing systems function in the world, which make it possible to precisely determine the aptitude of a child over a certain period of time.
“Finally, the testing system is insensitive to a person’s special creative abilities. People who can create something new are left out in the cold, even though society is comprised of 10 percent of such people. They are less effective in standard situations in which they demonstrate knowledge below their true level.
“In the future, the testing system should be modified in such a way as to remove its interpretation as one serving to overcome corruption in the education system. Moreover, it can be used as an ancillary method — universities that are responsible for breakthroughs in society’s development should carry out the final selection using their own methods.”
Hennadii PIVNIAK , the rector of Dnipropetrovsk National Mining Institute:
“On the basis of the regulations established by the education and justice ministries, the entrance test regulations were written for each institution of higher education with due account of their internal life. The Ministry of Education simply made certain actions more specific, modifying the entrance conditions. The changes pertained primarily to students who are entitled to benefits and can be accepted if they have independent testing certificates. Such students (orphans and invalids) are accepted over all others.
“As concerns independent testing, I believe this is a necessary element in the development and reform of our higher educational system from the positions of a systematic and equal approach to teaching schoolchildren and then creating an equal footing for them to enter college. Of course, this large-scale, nationwide experiment may be evaluated in different ways, depending on how each region has been implementing this technology. This is a necessary element, but it requires a most comprehensive study of the experience of this year’s campaign, and it should be painstakingly examined when organizing and carrying out the next entrance campaign. This is what our university is doing.
“However, at the same time there are many applicants for technical specialties. This is why institutions of higher education should, I believe, work more with vocational school graduates in the future- not during the entrance campaign, but rather over a long span of time, kindling their interest in technological specialties or, more exactly, building this interest in research and technological projects, as well as conducting practice and excursions to educational institutions. It is crucial for technical specialties to develop with a view to the innovative development path for Ukraine’s economy and the creation of high-technology industrial production. Without this, no independent testing will resolve the issue of the further consolidation and development of the personality.
“I believe that independent testing will exist in the future, but trust in the university, the professor, and his audience should increase. As for corruption, it does not reside in the education system per se but extends far beyond the limits of the university milieu. Corruption is a general problem in our country, and it will be solved if Ukraine’s economy grows. The more it relies on high technology, the greater will be the demand for the intellectual potential produced by technical universities.”
