Challenges for intellectual autonomy

Last week the confrontation “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy vs. Dmytro Tabachnyk” took a new turn. The president of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Serhii Kvit wrote an open letter to the country’s top officials regarding the movement towards the authoritarian centralization of governance and the degradation of science and education in Ukraine that Tabachnyk has pushed for. First of all this letter concerned the educational innovations presupposed by the bill “On Higher Education.” Serhii Kvit expounded in seven points the key concerns of the Kyiv-Mohyla community (one can find the letter on the university’s website, www.ukma.kiev.ua). Soon (after Tabachnyk was “transformed” from minister of education and science into the minister of education, science and sport) one more appeal appeared: the rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University Father Borys Gudziak voiced his support for the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

“The ministry should have studied the educational system of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and spread its experience in the entire sphere of higher education by means of promoting the proper legislative reform. That is why it is surprising that a reverse tendency is taking place in Ukraine: original educational phenomena are squeezed into the Procrustean bed of flawed law,” wrote Father Gudziak. What are the rectors of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and the Ukrainian Catholic University protecting, and why don’t their colleagues from other universities support them?

In the consciousness of most Ukrainians, regardless of whether they are workers or high officials, universities are viewed as educational establishments. This view has been established for decades and dates back to the Soviet times. The Western European tradition has a different idea of the university, as a place for free intellectual development, or more precisely, the tools that ensure the development of the intellect. The formation of a personality capable of independent critical thinking is the final result of the university’s activity. The Day has special relations with many universities. An interesting discussion regarding the social mission of universities in Ukraine has recently been held in Ostroh with the participation of The Day’s editor-in-chief. It’s main idea was that today no higher educational institution (HEI) fulfills its mission from the viewpoint of European tradition: they don’t form an independent competent intellectual as an important social figure. Therefore, the activity of HEIs is reduced to handing out diplomas, and the formation of critically-minded intellectuals is but a side-effect.

However, it would be a mistake to hold specific rectors or officials responsible.

The problem is that they are excessively dependent on state resources. This would be a good argument in favor of private higher education if it were not for the experience of some private HEIs in Ukraine. Unfortunately, so far no private university claims to be a leader among Ukrainian universities.

The Ukrainian system of education makes HEIs dependent on state financing above all, and thus — on the corrupt bureaucratic machine. If you want a license for your specialty, go to the ministry, wait in lines for hours, negotiate... If you want the 4th level of accreditation, you must prove that your HEI deserved it (but not by research achievements, but by the number of doctors, candidates, lecture halls, etc.). If you want a new building… This is how rectors, vice-rectors, deans, and heads of departments are transformed from people of science into bureaucrats.

In the early 1990s three HEI with long historical traditions were revived, but in a way each of them once ceased to exist. These are the Ostroh Academy, the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and the Ukrainian Catholic University. These universities (which were partly financed by sponsors or, as it is the case with the Ukrainian Catholic University, by a religious community), from the very beginning, aimed to create an educational process based on Western models and on their own historical traditions. They managed to do this to some extent owing to the personalities of those who headed these academic communities: Ihor Pasichnyk, Viacheslav Briukhovetsky, and Father Mykhailo Dymyd (Serhii Kvit and Father Borys Gudziak succeeded the latter two). These three higher educational establishments were given carte blanche for the “otherness,” which can be seen in the absence of bribery, the democratic educational process, and the attentive attitude to moral and patriotic issues at these schools. They have certainly done their job over the past 15 years — not only because they are highly evaluated by employers, but also because they created a foundation for civic society. In most public organizations throughout Ukraine you will find graduates of the Ostroh Academy or the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Most of these people, possessing deep knowledge and open-mindedness, supporting the horizontal ties in society.

Now regarding the appeal of Serhii Kvit and Father Borys Gudziak. I’m not sure Dmytro Tabachnyk, who has become a scapegoat for all the social sins of the current government, fears the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy so much that he is directly targeting it through the creation of legislation. In order to evaluate the role of the previously mentioned HEIs, it is ne-cessary to understand the mission of a free university in a democratic society. Moreover, the main norms of the bill were elaborated when Ivan Vakarchuk was the education minister, and Volodymyr Polokhalo, a people’s deputy from the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko, the head of the committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for science and education, was its initiator. There is another problem: neither society, nor the government realize that universities and the academic community are not compatible with state bureaucracy. They differ in terms of ways of communication, worldview, and forms of organization.

The autonomy of universities doesn’t presuppose a situation when the minister, without notification, appears in a HEI in the morning and persistently offers the rector to write a letter of dismissal “willingly.” Autonomy does not presuppose “cooperation” between rectors and teachers and the Security Service of Ukraine regarding the activities of students. Autonomy does not presuppose the humiliating dependence of a scholar on an official. And Tabachnyk, as a scholar, should understand this. Certainly, one should not idealize Ukrainian academia either. Isn’t it due to the participation of today’s academics and professors that this system of intellectual oppression was created?

How can the law limit autonomy if there is no real aspiration for autonomy? Indeed, it’s easier to be accommodating, take bribes quietly, and make the ministry responsible for the quality of diplomas…