New Education for a New Ukraine

What You Need to Know:

✅ Inna Sovsun, First Deputy Minister of Education says that corruption has been eliminated from the application process at the university level thanks to the introduction of an automated system;
✅ “We do in fact spend quite a big portion of government expenditures on education-- higher education. About 40% of that funding is money going to stipends for those students;”
✅ With Ukrainian teachers being among the worst paid in Europe, Sovsun says that salaries will be performance-based in the future and that a new system has already been introduced;
✅ “You don’t have enough data to estimate the quality of the university. The government doesn’t pay enough attention to the monitoring systems and to data-gathering systems.”

Ukraine's education system has long been plagued by allegations of corruption, with many students, particularly those at the university level, complaining of bribery for grades as a norm in some institutions. Inna Sovsun, First Deputy Minister of Education says that corruption has been eliminated from the application process at the university level thanks to the introduction of an automated system. However, there is still much work that needs to be done in order to provide more transparency, and increase the quality of education. “We do in fact spend quite a big portion of government expenditures on education – higher education. About 40% of that funding is money going to stipends for those students,” she says.

Yegor Stadnyi, Executive Director of CEDOS think-tank is grateful to the Ministry of Education for their work but questions their priorities: “Content is not under the control of the Ministry… What remains in the hands of the Ministry is funding allocation and the formation of this budget.” Stadnyi says there is a big problem with where they allocate their funds.

With Ukrainian teachers being among the worst paid in Europe, Sovsun says that salaries will be performance-based in the future and that a new system has already been introduced. “We can’t just promise to raise the salary for everybody. That would be populist and irresponsible and that will not raise the quality. The main concern is quality after all.”

While Sovsun believes that the quality level of the university level matches the entrance behavior and motivation of the student, Stadnyi argues that there is no correlation between the two: “You don’t have enough data to estimate the quality of the university. The government doesn’t pay enough attention to the monitoring systems and to data-gathering systems.”

Hromadske’s Andriy Kulykov and Guest Host Marta Dyczok spoke to Inna Sovsun, First Deputy Minister of Education, and Yegor Stadnyi, Executive Director of CEDOS  Think Tank during the Sunday Show on August 10th, 2016 in Kyiv.