Ostroh Academy <b> &#8594;</b> January 19, 2019

Ministry of Education, Science, Youth, and Sport signed a contract with professor Ihor Pasichnyk. According to it, he will hold the post of chancellor of National University Ostroh Academy till January 19, 2019. In fact, the process of Pasichnyk’s reassignment to this position has caused a wave of indignation not only within the academic community, but in the society in general. The Day’s readers know that the credit of revival of the university can be given to its permanent chancellor. And the very process of dismissing Pasichnyk from the post, assigning him to be an acting chancellor, and only then signing the contract, looked like a show because of the response it drew in the mass media. Allegedly, neither degrees, neither history of services for society, nor the authority among the colleagues come in handy when the all-powerful invincible bureaucracy comes to action. 

Though it should be mentioned that Pasichnyk treated these trials with Christian humility. He calmed down his students, who were ready to protest, with an official appeal and performed all the demanded procedures meticulously.

It is symbolical that editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna will be the first guest at the university after Pasichnyk’s official assignment. The Day has been supporting Ostroh Academy for nine years, it is more than a half of the period since it was reborn. And students and teachers of the university are constant readers and authors of the paper. The meetings dedicated to the Unity Day in Ostroh have become a good tradition. And The Day have talked to Pasichnyk on the eve of this visit.

We are glad that we finally can congratulate you on the occasion of your assignment. What do you feel now? We know that Ostroh Academy and you personally have been going though a hard period recently.

“I feel now that we will be able to go on with our work normally and continue the process of revival of Ostroh Academy. I must say that it was not that easy to stay for one more term. I had to write a thorough plan of the further development of the academy. All four presidents of Ukraine who have visited our university said they see our revived academy becoming a ‘Ukrainian Oxford.’ But so many things need to be done for this to happen. We need to construct new buildings, create a research and development complex, a decent sports complex, infrastructure for students’ leisure, new dorms. Though we do not set an intensive increase of the number of students as a goal, it would be absurd. The smaller the university is, the higher is the quality of education, we are certain of that now.

“And our concept is justified because the Ostroh Academy graduates are in high demand in the job market. Despite the fact that it was hard to find a job last year, the statistics say that 91 percent of the academy graduates work in their field. Therefore, a maximum number of students in our academy will not exceed five to seven thousands in the nearest future.

“And of course our main goal is involving high quality professionals. At the present time 80 percent of our teaching staff are candidates of science or PhDs in areas that are already available for studying. But we are going to present new majors: medical psychology, nuclear physics, applied mathematics, etc. As you see, we are going deeper into the field of sciences during the next few years. And for this to be done we need specialists, and the most importantly, young specialists. We definitely do value the experience, but in order to set these areas on European level, we need ambitious people who want to work in new ways and are eager to combine theory and practice. This task can be undertaken and completed by the people with a modern way of thinking. We need to have something to offer the talented youth if we want to involve them, something like a decent standard of living. And this includes apartments, proper wages, and working conditions.

“Besides, we are working on rating indexes. Though, you know, frankly speaking, Ukraine is too obsessed with ratings and getting on top of the list or just being on it at any price. However, there are so many universities around the world that do not participate in these ratings but are quite respectable at the same time. For example, you will not be able to find London School of Economics on any of the lists, but it is one of the best places in the world where economics can be studied. And Harvard is on top in the ratings, but has it worked to its benefit, or is it vice versa? The main thing is not chasing after ratings positions, but the professionalism of the graduates.

“Another thing is that Ukrainian higher education establishments have a task of the highest priority that cannot be considered by neither world, nor national ratings – the proper upbringing. The era of uncontrolled capital accumulation, low quality media content have done their thing – the absolute mercantilization of consciousness took place. Ostroh Academy gives a lot of attention to Christian ethics for a reason. We need to work on the active forms of education and upbringing. And performing it in accordance to modern conditions and requirements is a task that should be completed in the near future.”

The very fact of dismissal and appointment of a chancellor by a ministry is contrary to the European notion of university autonomy.

“Indeed, in terms of university autonomy, a chancellor should be dismissed and elected by the faculty and staff. The Ministry can only assess certain individual figures. But bureaucrats do not live or work at the university, thus they can’t see the real changes which are going on. Only the staff does. Therefore the procedure should look like this: as the chancellor’s term in office expires, the vacancy should be advertized in the national media, a commission should be created to examine the applicant’s documents, the applicants present their programs (first and foremost, to the staff), then follows the voting procedure. And that’s all. The applicant with 51 percent of votes or more becomes chancellor by default, and there should be no other problems related to this. That is the way it should be. Another question is that this process should be perfect, and its fairness and transparency should be beyond doubt.”

The parliament is now examining a third version of draft Law “On Higher Education.” At a certain moment you said in a commentary to The Day that this third draft is basically okay. But it was before your re-election, which revealed the formality of many procedures. Do you think it is worthwhile initiating further improvement of the future Law “On Higher Education”?

“Any law can be improved endlessly. Life moves on. But I think that it is high time to pass the law. This saga has been dragging on too long, we have been talking about it so much that it is starting to backfire, and those endless discussions themselves have a negative impact on the system of education. Now we need concrete action. At least, this third ministerial draft has a lot of positive moments. Yes, it did include controversial, even negative moments. But we have to hand it down to the legislators in charge of the draft: they did react to our remarks.

“At the moment I can say that I don’t like the fact that the status of universities will be determined on the basis of how many specialized councils [a board of scholars responsible for awarding of doctoral degrees. – Ed.] they have. The only outcome will be that only a few universities will be able to get a status of the classical university. Moreover, that will only be the universities of Kyiv, Donetsk, and Kharkiv. And I am not at all sure that any of the universities in Lviv will qualify as classical on the grounds of this requirement.

“Even this fact alone shows that the draft requires further perfection. But the positive provisions it includes are an impact on the way to the European standards in Ukrainian education. Even the very process of discussion of the future law, with the participation of university chancellors, professors, students and the broad public, brings us closer to European norms.

“I think that the Ministerial draft should be taken as the basis. It needs to be complemented with sensible provisions from other proposals, regardless of which political forces made them. And the law has to be passed, because the process is taking too long.”

Recently the Lviv public were having a heated discussion about the construction of the Lviv Catholic University building, financed by Dmytro Firtash. Public universities also find government budgeting scarce, and each of them is seeking for some way to obtain finance. Do you think that a donor’s repute matters, as well as where his money comes from?

“First of all, finance is indeed scarce. We are offered to close all the gaps from special funds. But these gaps include library needs, since they are not financed by state, and repairs and renovations. Now we will have to use those special funds to pay for energy resources, because prices have been rising again. It is clear that some chancellors must replenish budgets by means of donations. The Ostroh Academy is no exception. I cannot give you exact numbers, but we have already mobilized tens of millions dollars from private sponsors. Thus a question arises, who has allocated more money to revive the Ostroh Academy, Ukraine’s government or citizens (not only Ukrainian, by the way). I am happy that a lot of decent people have participated in the development of our university, such as Liubomyr Buniak and Oleh Kashtan, for instance.

“I am also proud to name Vitalii Haiduk and his family among Ukrainian donors. Each student at the Academy knows Haiduk’s name. Why? Because the students use the bus presented by Haiduk; the library equipment which they use every day is also bought with the Haiduk family money, the original Ostroh Bible was also a present from Haiduk.

“If someone gives money to education, it must be accepted, no matter who the donor is. The same goes for churches and hospitals. Because this money will be used for the good of society. It is actually very good that Ukraine’s rich are trying to turn from oligarchs into donors. It means that we have entered a new stage in our development.

“The way this money is going to be used is another question. For several years now we have been supported by a Canadian millionair Erast Hutsuliak, who finances the construction of the Arts building, because he can see that the funds he transfers are being appropriately used. Sponsorship is also a matter of mutual confidence, which is also very important for Ukrainian society. It is a process of mutual education, which we have not yet completed, but we surely will.

“It is clear that the state simply cannot afford to support all those universities which exist in Ukraine today. As a result, many of them may simply be doomed. To avoid this, the government should take a risk and try an experiment with privatizing certain state-owned universities. Of course, a clear procedure has to be elaborated, which will transfer the universities in question in charge of stakeholders’ boards. I am sure that there will be universities, whose faculties will agree to privatization. State won’t have to worry about construction, repairs, and salaries, since university itself will take care of it. The only thing that state guarantees is 30 to 50 percent of state orders for training the necessary specialists.”

Do you think the Ostroh Academy would agree to undergo denationalization?

“Yes, I think so. And I think that the Kyiv Mohyla Academy would also immediately agree to denationalization. State loses nothing in this. Let the government allow us to compensate the value of the buildings and premises in, let’s say, a hundred years. We have actually been working as half-private schools already. Most universities earn more through their special funds than the state budget provides them with. Paradoxically, state will not allow the universities to manage the money they earn!”

The Day has announced 2012 the Year of the “Sandarmokh List.” Ukrainian society is still facing the outstanding task of getting rid of the totalitarian legacy. Is Ukraine’s higher education ready to take this challenge, although it is itself to a certain degree a product of totalitarianism?

“The Ukrainian higher education is overwhelmed by the traditions rooted in the era of totalitarianism. There is no doubt about this. But frankly speaking, we are simply obliged to preserve the algorithm of education, which was written in Soviet time, or else we will eventually ruin the system of education. Experience shows that this algorithm was (and still is) quite progressive.

“On the other hand, we have kept the totalitarian-age traditions and values in our education, and they are very stubborn. How can we give them up? From a psychologist’s perspective, we need to replace these dominants with stronger ones. Over the 20 years of independence we have not created an integrated system of education, which would allow to shape a personality from birth into adulthood. Universities have no idea whom and what they are producing. The passing of the Law ‘On Education’ is no education reform. It is a change of approaches and forms. Reform in education will only begin when we start speaking about the reform of moral values. But this is something no one will talk about in this country. Unfortunately. Why is that so? Because until now they are afraid to acknowledge that a fully-fledged personality can only be shaped on the basis of two categories, morals and national development. Without this there is no citizen. The forms and methods in the Soviet education system were very efficient and well-elaborated. We should only have filled them with new contents, which we never did. However, nature abhors vacuum. As a result, via mass media our space has been filled with all sorts of nonsense, which is shaping the modern individual. The only way out is to focus on quality media.”