“Pure education”

Despite the fact that Ukraine joined the Bologna Process several years ago and external independent knowledge assessment has been implemented for many years, corruption in the sphere of education is flourishing. Proof of this is the results of a survey conducted in 2007 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology: 46 percent of respondents said that bribery is widespread in institutions of higher education, 47 percent of respondents who have attended higher schools or study there admitted that they were asked to give bribes, and 29 percent admitted that they had offered bribes on their own initiative.

Civic organizations have started to fight corruption in education. One of them, the national youth civic organization Molody Rukh, has launched a project called the “Pure Education Anti-Corruption Wave,” which, its initiators believe, will help tackle the problem.

“Bribery exists on every level of the educational process: during enrollment, examinations, in the professional activity of teachers, and during theses defense. Everyone is aware of this, everyone writes and discusses this, but nobody is adopting any crucial measures to fight corruption,” said Liubomyr Hrytsak, the head of the organization. “Parents and enrollees do not believe that a person can enroll in an institution of higher education on the sole strength of the results of external independent assessment rather than with the help of acquaintances.

“This is why many parents have already ‘purchased’ places in higher educational establishments for their children. This was the impetus for launching the ‘Pure Education Anti-Corruption Wave.’ Its activities will include observation and informational accompaniment for the summer 2008 session, external independent assessments, entrance examinations, and the winter 2008-09 session.”

The participants of the project will spend the year observing how students pass their examinations and enroll in schools of higher education. Regional committees will be established in every region of Ukraine to find observers for examinations and testing.

Although the Ukrainian Educational Quality Assessment Center supports this monitoring project, it believes that civic organizations cannot overcome corruption on their own under the conditions where the cult of money is paramount in society. The head of the center, Ihor Likarchuk, says that people still have the stereotype that says everything can be bought in the country, starting from a mark to a candidate’s degree. Since the system of external independent assessment offers completely different rules of game, particularly during the enrollment process, many people do not want to accept them.

“The greatest resistance to the system of independent assessment comes from directors and lecturers at institutions of higher education and secondary schools, with the greatest threat represented by those teachers who are still preaching the principles of totalitarian pedagogy, i.e., they consider themselves to be masters of their students’ destinies,” Likarchuk explained. “No less a threat to the testing system comes from those bureaucrats who benefit from having certain connections with educators, but the current educational innovations are ruining them. Of course, one cannot do without the help of civic organizations because nearly 300,000 independent and unbiased citizens will be observers of this year’s testing. I hope their participation will help secure equal, fair, and transparent testing conditions.”

Besides civic organizations and the organizers of independent testing, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine is also trying to fight corruption. Nadia Dobidovska, the chief specialist at the ministry’s Department of Natural Science Teaching, explained that the ministry uses its own methods: during enrolment campaigns and examinations a hot line is opened to receive citizens’ complaints about cases of bribery in educational establishments. In addition, every three months the ministry shares information with the Ministry of Internal Affairs about how lecturers or heads of institutions of higher education who abused their positions have been punished.

The Ministry of Education also stresses that no school of higher education has the right to conduct additional enrollment exams except for external testing during this year’s enrollment campaign: this is viewed as another method of fighting corruption in education. Experts advise parents and students enrolling in universities and colleges to trust those who are conducting the independent assessment, not those who are accustomed to giving and receiving bribes, so that the anti-corruption campaign now being launched by civic organizations will be successful.