Legal and socio-economic aspects of reforming Ukraine's higher education system

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Department of Coordination of Scientific Events International Cooperation and Grant Activities Leonid Yuzkov Khmelnytskyi University of Management and Law

Department of Public Administration and Public Service National Academy for Public Administration under the President of Ukraine

Department on Issues of Lawmaking and Scientific Expertise Leonid Yuzkov Khmelnytskyi University of Management and Law

Legal and socio-economic aspects of reforming ukraine's higher education system

Maya Sitsinska, Anatoliy Sitsinskiy

Vladislav Nikolaiev, Svitlana Khadzhyradieva, Igor Hasiuk

Kyiv, Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine

Abstract

The aim of the article is to critically review the effectiveness of the processes of reforming Ukraine's higher education system in the light of integration into the European educational space. Also, the goal is to define the boundaries of the legislative control of the education system at the state level. The defining theoretical concept for the development of higher education in Ukraine is its leading role in ensuring the sustainable socio-economic development of the country through the implementation and legal protection of the inalienable right of citizens to education, obtaining quality educational services, comprehensive intellectual and spiritual development.

The main research methods are the frequency analysis method and the mathematical statistics methods, which were used to process the data ofthe questionnaire ofpublic officials. It has been determined that in the conditions of socio-economic, socio-political, legislative, administrative and managerial crisis, increasing competitive requirements for the higher education system of Ukraine, the leading purpose of its modernisation is the formation of new content and quality standards of educational services, which will ensure the maximum integration of Ukraine in the world and European educational space. In the context of a sociological survey of civil servants, the circle of threats, the structure of their relationships and sources of origin are outlined, which are the first priorities of the state administration, aimed at ensuring the sustainable development of the higher education system of Ukraine.

The novelty of the study is due to a sociological survey of public officials in order to determine the expert opinion on key issues. It is important to find out what legal responsibility people will bear for opposing the laws of Ukraine on education. The authors also collected an expert opinion on key issues that will improve Ukrainian legislation in the field of higher education. The practical importance is determined by the necessity to outline priority areas to counter the existing and more potentially dangerous threats to the sustainable development of higher education in Ukraine

Keywords: education policy, higher education development, higher education system, sustainable development, public administration

Анотація

ЮРИДИЧНІ ТА СОЦІАЛЬНО-ЕКОНОМІЧНІ АСПЕКТИ РЕФОРМУВАННЯ СИСТЕМИ ВИЩОЇ ОСВІТИ УКРАЇНИ

Майя Сіцінська, Анатолій Сіцінський

Владислав Ніколаєв, Світлана Хаджірадєва

Відділ з координації наукових заходів міжнародного співробітництва та грантової діяльності Хмельницький університет управління та права імені Леоніда Юзькова

Кафедра публічного управління та публічної служби Національна академія державного управління при Президентові України

Хмельницький, Україна

Київ, Україна

Ігор Гасюк

Відділ з питань законотворчості і наукових експертиз Хмельницький університет управління та права імені Леоніда Юзькова

Хмельницький, Україна

Ціль статті полягає в критичному огляді ефективності процесів реформування системи вищої освіти України у світлі інтеграції до європейського освітнього простору. Визначальним теоретичним концептом розвитку вищої освіти в Україні є її провідна роль у забезпеченні сталого соціально-економічного розвитку держави шляхом реалізації невід'ємного права громадян на освіту, отримання якісних освітніх послуг, усебічного інтелектуального та духовного розвитку. Основними методами дослідження є метод частотного аналізу та методи математичної статистики, за допомогою яких здійснювалась обробка вихідних даних анкетування державних службовців. Визначено, що в умовах соціально-економічної, суспільно-політичної, адміністративно- управлінської кризи, підвищення конкурентних вимог до системи вищої освіти України провідною метою її модернізації є формування нового змісту та стандартів якості освітніх послуг, які забезпечать максимальну інтеграцію України у світовий та європейський освітній простір. У контексті проведеного соціологічного опитування державних службовців окреслено коло загроз, структуру їх взаємозв'язків та джерел виникнення, які є першочерговими цільовими пріоритетами державного управління, метою якого є забезпечення сталого розвитку системи вищої освіти України. Новизна дослідження зумовлена проведенням соціологічного опитування державних службовців з метою визначення експертної думки щодо ключових питань. Практичне значення визначається необхідністю окреслення пріоритетних напрямів щодо протидії наявним і більш потенційно небезпечним загрозам сталому розвитку вищої освіти в Україні

Ключові слова: освітня політика, розвиток вищої освіти, система вищої освіти, сталий розвиток, державне управління

Introduction

Since Ukraine's proclamation as a sovereign and independent state, the processes of modernization of the higher education system have been going on. Ukraine's accession to the Bologna Process in 2006 led to a systematic review of the legal framework for regulating the relations of participants in the educational process, revision of state standards of higher education content, establishing new rules and procedures for access to higher education in Ukraine, improving the quality of educational services. As a result, the uncoordinated state policy of reforming Ukraine's higher education that consisted of ignoring its adaptive capacities to the new requirements and standards of the European education system, which were caused by insufficient financial resources, fundamentally different organisational and legal norms of its construction, lack of clear and transparent rules of functioning educational institutions of different forms of ownership, led to the deepening of the systemic crisis in higher education.

According to independent statistics [1], the devastating processes of destruction of its scientific and technical potential, the decline of science and a significant influx of scientists and teaching staff abroad are deepening in Ukraine. According to the Human Development Index, according to the World Economic Forum in 2016, Ukraine ranked 26th among 130 countries in the world, and in the global competitiveness index in 2016-2017, Ukraine ranked

Table 1. Demographic indicators of the studied sample population

Law of Ukraine No. 1556-VII “On Higher Education”. (2014, July). Retrieved from http://zakon5.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/1556-18. Ibidem, 2014.

The questionnaires were formulated in a closed type and provided yes and no answer options, which made it possible to clarify subjective considerations of civil servants regarding the presence or absence of threats to the sustainable development of higher education and to determine based on their expert opinion the priority of existing threatsby regional and content distribution. Each question was characterised by a specific type of threat or source of threats, namely: quality of educational services; use of advanced training techniques; effectiveness of national patriotic education; employment opportunities for graduates; professional competence of teachers; the spread of corruption in higher education institutions; reduction of the number of higher education institutions; depreciation of diplomas and status of higher education; interaction with the public; emigration of scientists, HEI teachers abroad; desire of young people to go abroad for study and employment.

Table 2. Distribution of respondents' answers regarding the presence or absence of security threats to the humanitarian sphere in higher education in their area

Note: * - Questionnaire point: Do you think that there are security threats to the humanities sector in higher education in your area?

The initial data of the public officials' questionnaire was processed by applying the methods of mathematical statistics: determination of the sample size, establishment of the required level of accuracy of the study with acceptable error, determination of the confidence interval, digital codification of data, frequency analysis, determination of the percentage distribution of responses by types of threats and by oblasts of Ukraine, conducting a rating on the types of threats identifying the most important for all oblasts of Ukraine by applying the index method, nonparametric correlation analysis by determining the coefficient of Kendall with the purpose of establishing the fact of presence or absence of correlation between the investigated types of threats, nonparametric variance analysis of Friedman and calculating the coefficient of Kendall's concordance with the purpose of establishing

Frequency analysis and percent distribution of baseline data allowed to identify which, according to experts, threats and sources of their origin are priorities in terms of the destructive impact on higher education in Ukraine, and which, given the significant majority of creating new knowledge, effective introduction of new technologies and innovations in the field of economic activity in order to ensure sustainable economic development of society. The recently adopted new version of the Law of Ukraine “On Higher Education”1 introduces significant changes to the system of organisational and legal regulation of the activity of the higher education system of Ukraine, which substantially approximates the standards and norms of functioning of the European higher education system. The main innovations are the adaptation to the European norms of the system of educational and qualification levels, the procedure for issuing diplomas of higher education, including jointly with foreign HEIs, expanding the autonomy of higher education institutions, the establishment of a national agency for quality of higher education, procedures for accreditation of educational and scientific programs, admission rules and regulations to study. As defined in Art. 3 P. 3 of this Law2, formation and implementation of the state policy in the field of higher education is ensured by maintaining and developing the higher education system and improving its quality, development of autonomy of institutions, ensuring the development of scientific, scientific and technical and other activities of higher education institutions.

Conducting this study on the challenges and threats to the sustainable development of Ukraine's higher education system, given its critical state and reform policies to modernise it pursued by the country's government, will allow to outline directions for finding scientifically sound answers to a number of key questions. The research the authors have organised and conducted will allow to outline priority directions to counter the existing and more potentially dangerous threats to the sustainable development of higher education in Ukraine.

1. Methodology

Respondents are public officials between the ages of 20 and 67 who are administratively involved in the humanitarian field of education and culture. Given the gender aspect, the distribution of respondents is as follows: 53 male and 207 female (Table 1).

the harmonised experts' opinion on the questions under study, presence or absence of a significant difference in the judgments of public officials regarding the existing threats to sustainable development in education by type and oblast by calculating Q homogeneity statistics of two binomial samples by the formula 1 where: p is the ratio of n (trait value) to N (total sample):

according to the requirements of the scientific literature [11; 12]. The above tasks were accomplished using Statsoft Statistica 10 [13] computer mathematical and statistical complex, Microsoft Excel 2016.

2. Results and discussion

An analysis of the distribution of public officials' responses to the presence or absence of threats to the sustainable development of higher education in their areas showed that the most significant at the level of 0.1 is the majority of expert assessments of the existence of such threats in Ternopil (Q = 6.792), Ivano-Frankivsk (Q = 4.887), Poltava (Q = 3.369) oblasts. Public officials in the rest of the study areas expressed diametrically opposed views on this issue, indicating that there is no consensus on the assessment of the presence or absence of crisis phenomena in the higher education development processes of the respective oblasts. In total, out of 260 public officials interviewed, 151 are convinced that the higher education system is characterised by the presence of crisis phenomena, which destructively affect the functioning of higher education in Ukraine (Q = 5.122) (Table 2).

affirmative answers, were organised by rating [14-16]. Here are the first three positions: 1 - impossibility of employment of HEI graduates; 2 - desire of young people to go abroad to study with further employment; 3 - emigration of scientists and teaching staff abroad (Table 3).

Table 3. Distribution of respondents' responses on identifying priority types of threats and their sources of security for the humanitarian sphere in higher education (consolidated by Ukraine's oblasts)

Note: * - Hereinafter types of threats: 1 - quality of educational services; 2 - teaching methods; 3 - national-patriotic education; 4 - employment of HEI graduates; 5 - professional competence of teachers; 6 - corruption in HEIs; 7 - reduction of the HEIs number; 8 - depreciation of diplomas and status of higher education; 9 - interaction with the public; 10 - emigration of scientists; 11 - the desire of young people to go abroad to study

Another important issue in this study is understanding the structure of the relationship between existing threats based on the evaluative judgments of public officials, which may characterise a specific causation between them, and accordingly one of which can be classified as a source of the other (Table 4).

Table 4. Significance of Kendall correlation coefficients between the investigated indicators of security threats to the humanitarian sphere in higher education of Ukraine (according to the survey ofpublic officials, n = 260, v = “yes")

Note: * - Kendall's correlation coefficient is significant atp <0.05

In authors' opinion, poor quality of higher education is a leading, complex threat to the sustainable development of higher education in Ukraine [17-19]. The quality of higher education depends on many factors, but, as the results of the correlation analysis show, its correlation with the state of corruption in the HEI of Ukraine is significant (r = 0.516 p <0.05). As it has been defined above, the leading threat to the sustainable development of higher education in Ukraine is the systemic problems with graduates' employment, and which, in the opinion of experts, are closely linked to corruption in the HEIs, which in turn significantly affects the quality of higher education (r = 0.818 p <0.05). Another major threat is the desire of young people to pursue higher education in foreign educational institutions with further employment in these countries, which is functionally correlated with the professional competence of teachers of HEIs (r = 1.000 p <0.05), the depreciation of diplomas and the status of higher education. = 0.671 p <0.05), a state of corruption in the HEIs (r = 0.516 p <0.05).

Third in the rating of threats were processes related to the emigration of scientists abroad, which significantly correlated with the processes of depreciation of diplomas and status of higher education (r = 0.624 p <0.05) and the decrease in the number of higher education institutions (r = 0.571 p < 0.05). It is important to understand the reasons for the devaluation of diplomas and the status of higher education in Ukraine, and within the questions posed, they may, on the basis of established dependencies, be the subjective factors that characterise the quality of the educational process in the HEIs of Ukraine: national-patriotic upbringing of youth (r = 0.516 p <0.05); professional competence of teachers (r = 0.671 p <0.05); interaction between the state and the public (r = 0.516 p <0.05); emigration of competitive scientists abroad (r = 0.624 p <0.05).

It should also be noted that the level of corruption in the HEI is significantly related and, in authors' opinion, influences the quality of education (r = 0.516 p <0.05), which determines: the ability of graduates to continue to successfully work (r = 0.810 p <0.05); professional career and qualifications of teachers (r=0.516 p <0.05); development of a network of higher education institutions (decrease, increase of their number) (r = 0.463 p <0.05); the level of desire of young people to get higher education at home (r = 0.516 p <0.05). In addition, Friedman's analysis of variance and Kendall's coefficient of concordance of 0.654 (Table 5) gave ground for asserting a sufficient level of agreement of experts' opinions regarding the assessment of the presence or absence of certain types of threats to the sustainable development of higher education in Ukraine.

Table 5. Results of Friedman S analysis of variance and Kendall S concordance on the results ofpublic officials' questionnaires

Rating of oblasts based on the significant majority of affirmative responses of public officials to the combined presence of threats to the sustainable development of higher education in their oblasts makes it possible to state that in all the studied areas the threats and crisis phenomena in the higher education system are relevant (Table 6).

Table 6. Rating assessment of oblasts of Ukraine by the aggregate presence of threats and sources of their emergence in the humanitarian sphere in higher education of Ukraine

According to civil servants, the most pronounced crisis processes are observed in Ternopil (Q=22.612), Poltava (Q=19.854), Khmelnitskyi (Q=15.632) oblasts (Fig. 1). education standard economic right

Assessing the studied areas from the point of view of a validly confirmed number of threats, it is advisable to state that the level of danger is high and critical in eight oblasts of Ukraine out of nine investigated (Tables 7; 8), because, according to experts, in their oblasts, there are 7 to 10 threats to the sustainable development of higher education. It should be noted that the ranking of threats in each oblast by significance indicates their different priority in terms of destructive influence on the processes of sustainable development of higher education, that is, their decomposition structure has a pronounced regional factor, but at the same time the authors emphasise that the three leading threats identified by them remain for all areas under study (Tables 7, 8).

Figure 1. Level of threats to the humanitarian sphere in the field of higher education of Ukraine in the studied areas: 1 - Volyn obl.; 2 - Ternopil obl.; 3 - Ivano-Frankivsk obl.; 4 - Khmelnitskyi obl.; 5 - Kyiv obl.; 6 - Zhytomyr obl.; 7 - Poltava obl.; 8 - Odesa obl.; 9 - Kharkiv obl.

Table 7. Distribution of existing threats and sources of their occurrence in the humanities in higher education in the studied regions of Ukraine

Table 8. Rating grouping of existing topical threats to humanitarian security in higher education in the studied oblasts of Ukraine

The conducted research convincingly proves that the higher education system of Ukraine is in crisis, and its sustainable development is complicated by the existing threats and factors that are the source of their emergence [20]. The statistics presented by the authors on the quantitative features of the destructive processes occurring in the higher education system are in full agreement with the opinion of the surveyed public officials, which gives reason to conclude that the state administration have adequately assessed the state of affairs in the field of higher education. The content of the reform efforts of the country's government to modernise the higher education system by European and world standards makes it possible to state that the creation of new governance structures on the quality of education, the extension of powers and autonomy of higher education institutions, the regulation of the content and standards of higher education, etc. do not fully comply with the requirements and standards of threats to the sustainable development of higher education in Ukraine.

It should be noted that, as part of the overall strategy for the sustainable development of the higher education system of Ukraine, these measures are necessary and require regulation. However, the implementation of these measures will not produce the expected results without significant improvement in the material, technical, financial, information, etc. provision of scientific process, creation of decent conditions for remuneration of the teaching staff, social protection of students, the implementation by the state of planned, systematic activities to guarantee the implementation of the right to employment for graduates of HEIs. The Government does not conduct such measures, the strategy of long-term development of higher education and science in view of its integration into the concept of sustainable economic development of Ukraine is a priori absent, and the provisions and tasks of higher education development, defined in a number of state documents, are declarative and formal and in authors' opinion, in the current state of affairs of the country will not be implemented for a long time.

In addition, there is a fact that there is no state strategic planning and forecasting of indicators for which it is expedient

to evaluate the effectiveness of the processes of sustainable development of higher education in Ukraine, its quality, and only an attempt to translate this problem into the primary link of the higher education system - an educational institution - is observed. Another major factor in the emergence of crises in the higher education system is corruption, which, under the socio-economic conditions of today, is, first of all, extremely low salaries for teaching staff, which does not concern the heads and administration of the HEI, government policy pursued by the government, the state of the citizens' legal consciousness, is insurmountable. At present, every institution of higher education has formally proclaimed the fight against corruption in the educational and scientific process, falsification and academic plagiarism in scientific research, which is enshrined in the orders and orders of managers, but in fact these shameful phenomena are widespread.

There is also insufficient interaction between the state and non-governmental organisations to work with student youth, parents on identifying and reporting to law enforcement agencies about corruption in higher education institutions in Ukraine. Thus, it should be acknowledged that the economic crisis, the unprofessionalism of the country'sgovernment, the political involvement of certain socially active segments of the population, the total control over the country by oligarchic- criminal groups will not allow a priori to change the situation in the field of higher education in the near future.

Conclusions

The conducted research makes it possible to state with confidence that the government policy of modernisation of the higher education system of Ukraine does not fully meet the urgent needs of society and the state and is not able to fully ensure effective counteraction to the existing threats to the sustainable development of higher education. In this context, it is necessary to identify the main directions of state policy, which require a first-rate scientific and theoretical substantiation and further regulatory support. Current state policy and relevant strategic programs for the development of higher education in Ukraine should

be aligned with socio-economic realities, be based on deep scientific research, have clearly defined benchmarks and predictive indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of implementing measures for the development of higher education.

The strategy of higher education development must be based primarily on the principle of “education for human”, the rule of observance and protection of the rights of the teaching staff for decent pay and social guarantees, taking into account the intellectual, spiritual requests of society and the fullest possible satisfaction of the needs of citizens and the state. Establishment of interaction with employers, research of the labour market, formation of guarantees by the state for graduates of HEIs with respect to their further employment, establishment of economically justified norms of the state order for training of specialists in the relevant specialities. The development of a new current strategy requires immediate revision - a comprehensive program for combating corruption in higher education institutions of Ukraine. First of all, it concerns measures to detect corruption among senior management of HEIs, persons holding administrative, executive positions in public administration bodies. It is necessary to conceptually rethink the basics of quality assurance of the educational and scientific process, which should reflect the procedural certainty of the procedures for assessing the quality of educational activity of young people in accordance with the content and standards of the respective specialities, the quality of staffing, creating conditions for students to conduct independent research activities, combating academic plagiarism and borrowing, compliance of higher education standards with educational qualification levels of labour market requirements.

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