“DEMONOPOLIZATION” OF HIGHER EDUCATION AS A COMPONENT OF NATIONAL SECURITY OF UKRAINE (ARCHETYPAL APPROACH)

Abstract

The article deals with the intermediate results of the reform of higher education in Ukraine in accordance with the standard law. Examples of qualitative changes to reduce the burden on teachers, the prohibition of the combination of administrative positions at universities, transparency of the universities’ activities and the growth of student self-government rights are given. At the same time, there are several archetypes that impede the implementation of effective educational changes and which pose a potential threat to the national security of the state. All of them are reduced to the concept of “monopolization” of higher education as the concentration of key competences in this area, in particular in terms of ensuring the quality of education, in the hands of one (the ministry) or several interrelated public institutions (ministry, national quality agency, Public service of quality of education). Such archetypes are bureaucracy and inflexibility of the Ukrainian universities, which prevents them from competing on an equal footing with educational institutions of European countries; their organizational dependence on paternalism by the ministry and other institutions of power, on the one hand, and the excessive paternalism and reluctance of the state to delegate authority over the development of real university autonomy, on the other; the failure of public institutions in education to work on the principle of a project office with the transition to coordinating and monitoring functions; the refusal of the university environment and the ministry to recognize the public in the person of students, their parents and employers as equal partners in the processes of quality education management.The article deals with the intermediate results of the reform of higher education in Ukraine in accordance with the standard law. Examples of qualitative changes to reduce the burden on teachers, the prohibition of the combination of administrative positions at universities, transparency of the universities’ activities and the growth of student self-government rights are given. At the same time, there are several archetypes that impede the implementation of effective educational changes and which pose a potential threat to the national security of the state. All of them are reduced to the concept of “monopolization” of higher education as the concentration of key competences in this area, in particular in terms of ensuring the quality of education, in the hands of one (the ministry) or several interrelated public institutions (ministry, national quality agency, Public service of quality of education).

Such archetypes are bureaucracy and inflexibility of the Ukrainian universities, which prevents them from competing on an equal footing with educational institutions of European countries; their organizational dependence on paternalism by the ministry and other institutions of power, on the one hand, and the excessive paternalism and reluctance of the state to delegate authority over the development of real university autonomy, on the other; the failure of public institutions in education to work on the principle of a project office with the transition to coordinating and monitoring functions; the refusal of the university environment and the ministry to recognize the public in the person of students, their parents and employers as equal partners in the processes of quality education management.

In order to change the last archetype that some scholars call the “semantic core” of the whole model of higher education, it is proposed to create in Ukraine an institute of independent educational auditors as a mechanism of direct influence of the public and beneficiaries on the processes of higher education quality ensuring. The purpose of such an audit, its advantages for universities, the requirements to the professional level of the auditors themselves, organizational aspects and risks of the functioning of the institute of independent educational auditors are considered.