The Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. A year later, we investigate the degree to which Higher Education continues in Ukraine - as well as the organisations that support institutions and scholars during distress.
By Prisha Dandwani
“We need to show th+at you [Russia] can’t paralyse us."
When I speak to Yegor Stadnyi, he is sitting at his computer on the ground floor of a small university building. Below him, he tells me, is the space he often conducts meetings and classes: Kyiv School of Economics' bomb shelter.
Yet, Stadnyi is grounded, happy, and ready to share. In spite of the devastation and hardship, he tends to use the word ‘opportunity’ more than ‘challenge’ while describing how learning during the war has become a new normal.
Stadnyi, the Senior Vice-Rector at the Kyiv School of Economics, explains why continuing Higher Education is so important, “We are the only fully operational university in Kyiv that provides full on-campus education."
KSE classes were largely online until September 2022, when they were able to launch a new academic year with more on-campus interaction and facilities.
With a strong sense of humility, Stadnyi emphasises that they can continue in-person learning not because they are a "super duper” institution, but rather because they are small. There are approximately 300 students at the Kyiv School of Economics and the university is now equipped with the necessary underground shelters for all students and faculty. Larger universities with more than a 1000 students usually cannot build enough bomb shelters to accommodate everyone.
“We hold different classes in the bomb shelters, and we have the necessary equipment. Within it we also have the necessary multimedia, projectors, boards, comfortable seats,” Stadnyi adds.
In regards to what drives them – it is the fact that the invasion and continuous attacks by Russia are all aimed at paralysing Ukraine. “We need to show that you can’t paralyse us,” Stadnyi asserts.
A KSE class held in an underground bomb shelter, photo by KSE student
Fulfilment during ‘great uncertainty’
Stadnyi often refers to this period as one of ‘great uncertainty’ but also a period of ‘opportunities’, namely during which Ukrainians need to dig deep into their inner resources and strength. The institution receives support, and ultimately, its students feel supported. Having ongoing classes and seminars allows them to focus on their studies instead of the frightening (and often violent) uncertainty.
The campus is equipped with electricity, generators, and internet. So, Stadnyi says, “When students are surrounded by their friends, in a safe place- they find some calm. Sometimes, we will see a board after a class with warm, anonymous messages from students, thanking us for keeping it going.”
KSE also receives support through various means. In addition to being able to retain resources to keep the university running, visiting professors from Europe and beyond interact and engage with them.
“They [visiting professors] do not ask for remuneration or salary. We’ve had people come in from George Washington University, as well as German institutions, to be with us as visiting professors,” Stadnyi tells QS Insights Magazine.
He explains that what really helps is when different scholars collaborate with them, as well as when they are able to organise double diploma degrees. KSE already has connections with the University of Houston, Texas and the University of Toronto, Canada.
It is the act of forming bridges, sharing resources, and knowledge transfer that helps Ukraine not only in the present, but will prepare them for the future, during which they will need to rebuild and resupply human capital.
The KSE charitable foundation, a group of companies including the KSE institution, is an organisation that others can support Ukraine through. It raises funds and offers different donation options to help rebuild destroyed facilities, build bomb shelters, and supplies aid to some displaced scholars.
"At-risk scholars that are assisted become more empowered and are then able to extend themselves by sending their research work back to their home communities".
KSE’s global university
Dr. Dmytro Iarovyi, member of the Ukrainian Global University (UGU) executive team and lecturer at KSE, speaks to us about UGU, a global network that connects the world’s best Higher Education institutions with Ukrainian scholars. Many of them conduct studies abroad and are sponsored by universities on the basis they return to Ukraine later.
“We’ve had 3000 applications this year from Ukrainian students - to study abroad, and were able to place 52 of them.” Some of them have gone to Paris, and many to Europe and London, or the US. We have told other students we will try to place them abroad next year.
“The point is to avoid brain drain, we are going to need them [students] contributing, helping to build Ukraine - the agreement is they come back after five years, and work here for two years,” Iarovyi explains. He also mentions that professional education is just as important as Higher Education because engineers and technicians are key for infrastructure.
He’s confident about them coming back. “Ukrainians are patriots,” he says. The role of Higher Education during this war is to maintain inspiration and set the ground for rebuilding.
Ukraine is already making plans for strengthening its foundations now and after the war, and with such resilience, it is easy to believe they will succeed.
Support for countries and scholars in need
Ukraine is, of course, not the only country struggling through devastation. There are many ongoing conflicts around the world, wreaking havoc on infrastructure, stability and more specifically - education.
In response, a network of organisations have stepped up to support. Scholars At Risk (SAR), is an international network of institutions and individuals who work to protect scholars and promote academic freedom, headquartered on the campus of New York University (NYU). Sarah Willcox, its Deputy Director, explains that SAR's role is, "to provide direct assistance to threatened scholars worldwide and advocate to improve conditions which place scholars at risk in the first place.”
According to Willcox, SAR documents high-risk locations and raises awareness of them through the Academic Freedom Monitoring Project. The organisation continues to engage Higher Education institutions worldwide to provide direct assistance to threatened academics. They have worked with scholars in every region of the world and more recently, have seen a higher number of scholars seeking assistance from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iran, Turkey, Yemen, and of course - Ukraine.
One particular case was expanded on in episode 31 of SAR’s ‘Free to Think’ podcast. SAR’s Executive Director, Robert Quinn, spoke with Zahra Hakimi, a scholar and faculty member from Afghanistan. She also had experience as a midwife and a women’s reproductive healthcare provider.
Hakimi worked in secret and with great risk to provide treatment for survivors of sexual assault. In November 2022, with support from SAR, she visited the University of Ottawa as a Researcher at the Centre for Research on Health and Nursing.
During the podcast, Hakimi explained that, “When the Taliban came to power last time…women could not go to school. I was very worried, especially about the future of my daughter and another woman in Afghanistan.
“I’m so happy, especially that my daughter can go to school instead of marrying with [a] Talib. My daughter is a hard worker".
The ripple effect
While the work SAR does may appear to only help one scholar at a time, Willcox tells QS that this is not the case. At-risk scholars that are assisted become more empowered and are then able to extend themselves by sending their research work back to their home communities.
SAR Scholar, Majid Mgamis reflects on his discovery of the "richness of academic freedom." After his experience in his home country, he recognized the gifts of free scholarly exploration and the ability to raise awareness with his colleagues at University of Agder, Norway, where he now works as an Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages and Translation. His story can be found here.
In addition, at-risk scholars have benefited their host universities and communities.
“For example, when universities host an exiled colleague, their students and faculty have unique opportunities to learn from these experts what they may not otherwise have access to in highly specialised fields, such as the preservation of the Crimean Tatar language or the Mespotamian marshes of southern Iraq and Iran,” Willcox says.
It is clear that through these organisations, not only are more students supported, but the Higher Education industry grows through a deeper awareness of cultural developments around the world.
The result is a strong and more truly connected world, wherein support, kindness, and service can be extended to one another - which propels us all forward.
Academic freedom
Europe might not be the first place that comes to mind for concerns about academic freedom and the autonomy of universities. However, a new report by the continent’s university leaders suggests that they are operating under growing constraints.
By John O'Leary
Since the last survey of autonomy by the European University Association (EUA) in 2017, several countries have introduced reforms which increase external controls, especially in the financial sphere and in terms of universities’ ability to make international agreements. COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with the sharp energy price rises that followed it, have reduced universities’ room to manoeuvre and even encouraged some countries with more liberal regimes to tighten their controls.
The EUA’s ‘scorecard’, which provides a consistent measure of autonomy in four distinct areas - organisational, financial, staffing and academic - covers a highly diverse group of 35 higher education systems, from Turkey in the East to Ireland in the West. Consequently, as in 2017, there has been no uniform trend toward greater or lesser control over universities. Most of the larger systems have remained stable in terms of the autonomy exercised by institutions, a few making progress in areas such as staffing and organisation.
However, in his foreword to the latest report, Dr Michael Murphy, the EUA’s president, writes: “The results of the current study show that there are still far too many restrictions that prevent universities from realising their full potential: in intensified transnational cooperation models, such as the European University alliances; in developing internationally competitive conditions for academic staff; or in customising campus infrastructure in line with the institution’s strategic direction.”
Only England features in the top group for all four types of autonomy. Scotland and Finland are the nearest challengers, each missing out only on the financial metric, where Latvia recorded the top score. Cyprus, France, Greece, Serbia, Spain and Turkey appear in one of the two “low autonomy” groups in every comparison.
In 2017, just the United Kingdom - then assessed as a single group of nations - reached the highest category for autonomy in all four areas, with Estonia and Finland the closest to emulating this feat, missing out only on financial autonomy. France, Hungary, Serbia and Spain appeared in one of the two “low autonomy” categories in each of the four areas.
Inevitably, there are complications, even for universities in countries that allow high levels of autonomy. Theoretical powers do not amount to much where universities are so underfunded that they cannot make use of them. “Financial autonomy in practice may be considerably limited despite flexible legal frameworks, in particular, due to the acute challenge posed by the limited funding available in some systems,” the report says, echoing a caveat in the 2017 version. “The freedom for universities, in principle, to allocate funds internally or independently recruit and set salaries for (some) staff, remains essentially theoretical if the institutions do not have financial room to manoeuvre.”
Nor are legal frameworks the only consideration, according to the authors of the report, Thomas Estermann, Enora Bennetot Pruvot and Nino Popkhadze, all of whom are EUA officials. “Certain systems may be characterised by a high degree of formal autonomy, as measured by the Scorecard, but also display strong features of a compliance and control culture, which tends to push the sector towards uniformity,” they say. “England is one of the systems that ranks highest in the Autonomy Scorecard, but it also has a sophisticated ecosystem of incentives, monitoring, and control, and is not immune to micro-management and political pressure.”
Over the period covered by University Autonomy in Europe: The Scorecard 2023, the EUA found numerous cases of ad hoc state intervention beyond its traditional regulatory role. These included the Norwegian and Swedish authorities overruling university decisions regarding campus closures, even though the institutions are formally autonomous in this area. Another example cited in the report involved the announcement in 2021 by France’s Ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation that it intended to commission an inquiry into French university research focused on colonialism and race with the aim of distinguishing “real” academic research from activism.
The scorecard is based on more than 30 different indicators, each of which carries a points score. Data was collected on 31 countries, two Belgian regions and three German Lander, but Hungary was omitted from the scorecard because the relationship between universities and the state was not considered comparable with any other European country. A 2019 reform converted most public universities into ‘foundation universities’ with government-appointed boards of trustees which have extensive powers over the institution.
The authors describe developments in both Hungary and Turkey as “worrying”. Turkey was the only country placed in the bottom category for organisational autonomy and the only one where the selection, appointment and dismissal of the rector is in the hands of the country’s president. The report says: “This exceptional form of influence on university governance further impacts all dimensions of autonomy, beyond what can be reflected in the scoring.”
"Across the continent, finance was the sphere in which university autonomy had declined the most."
By contrast, Poland is singled out for the progress its universities have enjoyed since the previous report. Extensive reforms in 2018 made Poland the only country to move up in three of the four categories - organisational, financial and staffing autonomy. It remained stable for academic autonomy.
Across the continent, finance was the sphere in which university autonomy had declined the most. England and Latvia were the only countries to receive the top rating, while six systems – Cyprus, Greece, Hesse (in Germany), Norway, Serbia and Turkey - were placed in the bottom cluster, scoring 40% or less. The report finds that in roughly half of the systems, universities allocate their funding internally without specific restrictions, but in nine the block grant is divided into broad categories, such as teaching and research, which cannot be altered. Cyprus, Greece, Serbia and Turkey are found to have the most restrictive systems, described as “line-item budgets”.
The report says that the most recent period has “perhaps shed the starkest light on the sector’s vulnerability to external shocks.” Universities had to completely re-think their activities during the pandemic and geopolitical tensions during the Ukraine war also encouraged governments to apply greater scrutiny to universities and especially to their scientific collaboration. The authors acknowledge the complex interplay between autonomy and accountability, but they conclude that: “Europe’s diverse models show that there are various ways to combine academic expertise and self-determination with the necessary representation of public interest.”
University Autonomy in Europe IV, The Scorecard 2023: https://eua.eu/downloads/publications/eua%20autonomy%20scorecard.pdf
