The adoption of the law on higher education signed by the Ukrainian president means the start of a 'silent revolution' not only in education, but in the economy and social spheres as a whole, President of Bionic Hill innovation park Viktor Halasiuk has said.
“The law will evolutionarily renew the educational system which will be not the ballast, but the driver of the economic growth and social development,” he told Interfax-Ukraine.
Halasiuk said that the document passed ensures the real autonomation of educational institutions and the liquidation of the artificial barrier between science and education, on one hand, and business, on the other hand.
“With the lapse of time, universities will become ‘educational-scientific’ corporations, which have the possibility of cooperating legally with business. Employers, in turn, will become not passive actors with a non-speaking part, but real clients of the educational system who influence the standards and quality of education,” the expert said.
He added that the new law will considerably strengthen the role of professional associations, student’s self-government and integrate the country into the European educational space.
The president of Bionic Hill said that this concerns the replacement of the role of the state in education. He said that until now the super-centralized system existed in the country: the Education Ministry in Kyiv decided how many specialists are needed and how and what they should teach, how many funds each educational institution needs and other similar issues.
“The major part of universities and their presidents fought for financing from the center and for loyalty of the ministry, but not for the real quality and employers. Few of them heard business – how many specialists business needs, what educational programs should be used to teach students, who and how is to control the quality, etc. Business which ordered specialists did not have a possibility of influencing their training,” Halasiuk said.
He said that the basis of the new management model is to be the triple spiral: contacts between universities, business and the state, and business should play the key role, as it really orders the system, while universities which will boost the commercialization of their research studies are to become the accelerator of this triple spiral.
“This concerns the system when universities are to compete and actively attract partners, financing and projects,” he said.
He said that the state, on one hand, should open education for cooperation with business as much as possible, including international business, and leave the tough position in defining the sectoral top-priorities and points of growth to itself.
“We are to focus our efforts on the types of activities with the high added value cost, create fiscal, regulatory, infrastructure and other incentives for the development of business in the area of high technologies and new production facilities. With such an approach, education could become the real driver of a technological breakthrough which will outrun the economic development and social endeavors,” he said.
