Higher education diploma has lost its value, – KNU rector
28 October 2025 13:32
OPINION
Ukraine needs to retain strong universities, and this should have been done 20 years ago. According to Volodymyr Bugrov, Rector of the Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University, in an interview on the Kommersant Ukrainian YouTube channel, everyone from Education Minister Nikolayenko to Minister Lisov has tried to change the higher education system. And the thesis that the current network of higher education institutions does not correspond to the real state of the economy is absolutely correct. The only question is what criteria to choose for merging or joining universities to avoid what happened in Kamianets-Podilskyi this year.
Analysts state that we are currently facing a situation where there are more places in our higher education institutions than people willing to study. We are talking about licensed places: there are places financed by the state, and there are those paid for by the applicants themselves, parents, or law firms. According to the source, there are universities that are licensed for 400 places, but enroll only 50 people. In the spring, the Ministry of Education took the following step: according to the license conditions, if you do not use more than 50% of the licensed volume for two years in a row, these places are written off. However, the fact is that in recent years, as emphasized by Volodymyr Bugrov, the diploma of higher education has been devalued.
“In general, we devalued education back in the 90s. In 1991, there were only 10 universities in Ukraine, and the rest were institutes. The difference was that universities provided professional education. For example, the Pedagogical University trained teachers, although it was possible to become a teacher after graduating from a university’s history, geography, or other faculty. University education was universal. A mathematician from a pedagogical institute, university, or polytechnic school differed from one another. A university trained a research mathematician, and a graduate could be a teacher or lecturer. A mathematician from a polytechnic is a mathematician-engineer, and after a pedagogical university, a mathematician-teacher who studied less mathematical disciplines and more pedagogy and methods, i.e., he was preparing for a reproductive style of work: he had to convey knowledge to the student. And we were trained for a productive style, and at KPI we were trained for an innovative one,” said Volodymyr Buhrov.
According to the professor, in a sense, this needs to be brought back. There should be a focus on a specific result – what we want to see at the end. Now everything is mixed up, and it started back in the 90s, when everyone started turning into universities.
Let us remind you: on June 11, 2025, the Cabinet of Ministers decided to merge Ivan Ohienko Kamianets-Podilskyi National University (pedagogical) with Podilskyi State University (agricultural). A liquidation commission was set up, and the pedagogical university was granted the status of a closing institution. And on August 19, Minister of Education Oksen Lisovyi proposed the opposite decision – to merge the agrarian university with the pedagogical one, and to cancel the previous one as “unrealized.” The fact is that if the agrarian university, which owns 17,800 hectares of agricultural land and 234 real estate objects with an area of 185,000 square meters, is closed, it will lose the right to permanent use of the land. the 17.8 thousand hectares may go into “free circulation”. The company will also lose control over 5.8 hectares of land in the center of Kamyanets-Podilskyi (botanical garden), which will be returned to the community.
Earlier, [comersant ] reported that the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine dismissed the rector of Kherson State Agrarian and Economic University Yuriy Kirilov from his post.
Author: Alla Dunina
