The Ministry of Education has suspended the process of merging universities
21 March 2024 11:52
Minister of Education and Science Oksen Lisovyi said that the ministry is suspending the process of merging higher education institutions for the period of the 2024 admission campaign, Komersant ukrainskyi 
reports
Registration for the National Multisubject Test (NMT) has recently started, with the main session taking place from 14 May to 25 June. Then the active phase of the admission campaign will begin. However, both applicants and educational institutions are already actively preparing for admission.
Lisovyi said that for this reason, it was decided not to submit new changes to the higher education system to the government at the moment, except for those that are already under consideration by the central executive body. This applies to three draft orders concerning the merger of educational institutions in Lviv, Kryvyi Rih and Dnipro.
The Minister noted that over the next few months, the Ministry of Education and Science will be working on a development plan for individual merged universities and the entire network of higher education institutions in the future.
Modernisation of the university network
There are currently 140 higher education institutions in Ukraine that are subordinated to the Ministry of Education and Science. The MES has decided to reorganise and merge these institutions to reduce their number to 100. These recommendations do not include specific institutions to be reorganised or parameters for their selection.
The Ministry of Education plans to have a modernised network of higher education institutions by the summer of 2025.
The modernisation of the university network has certain criteria that will take into account the population of the city where the university is located and the number of students in the institution. For example, in cities with a population of less than 100,000 and one higher education institution that is a city-forming institution, universities will be preserved.
At the same time, if there are two universities in a city with this population, they will be merged. In 2024, the Ministry of Education planned to carry out the first stage of modernisation, namely the initial merger (consolidation).
