National Tempus / Erasmus+
Office in Ukraine

Place and date: Kiev – Ukraine on 5 and 6 December 2011

Target Countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

Aim of the event: to promote the Tempus and Erasmus Mundus (notably Action 2) programmes in the 6 Eastern Partnership countries; to enhance the regional dimension of the two programmes and to involve those institutions that have less exposure to international programmes.

Conference web-site: http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/index_en.php

Kyiv, 5 December. The EU Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilinguism and Youth, Ms. Androulla Vassiliou, opened the large regional conference on the Tempus and Erasmus Mundus programmes.

Part of Eastern Partnership (EaP)’s “Contact between People”, about 300 higher education (HE) stakeholders from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine attended to hear more about the programmes and increased opportunities resulting from significant increase to the programmes’ budgets for 2011-2013 period.

In her opening speech Commissioner Vassiliou spoke about the importance of the region and the EaP as indicated in latest Communication on Neighbourhood policy; the importance of education for growth and development; EU’s strategy and targets in education and training; the need for further modernisation of HE and for all Bologna signatories to implement reforms; the assistance that the EU provides to the EaP countries via HE programmes and policy dialogue; and finished with an indication of the future HE programme for the period 2014-2020, stressing its international dimension which will have an integrated approach to cooperation with the EU’s neighbours and re-group all existing programmes under one roof. The Commissioner also visited a very reputable and progressive university, National University Kiev Mohyla Academy, where she gave a public speech, met with faculty, students and staff, answered questions to the local press and had short interview with BBC as well as private lunch with the university students and alumni from Erasmus Mundus and College of Europe scholarships.

The most pressing issues which came out from these meetings as well as from briefings with the Delegation were: increasing corruption; lack of employment opportunities for even youth with EU experience; visa obstacles to mobility; lack of recognition of qualifications/credits gained during mobility experience; lack of transparency in government’s financing HE institutions; lack of recognition of degrees obtained outside Ukraine but also of PhD degrees obtained in Ukrainian institutions which had reformed their programme according to Bologna; the lack of university autonomy; no accreditation procedures with international standards; lack of reforms in HE explained to be due in part to resistance from academic community on the one hand but also due to support of Ministry to ex-Soviet system on the other.

The Commissioner was sympathetic to the difficult situation expressed and promised that Commission will continue to support Ukrainian institutions which wished to converge with European standards through the HE programmes, policy dialogue and possibly other support via the Delegation. She also stressed that as a Bologna signatory Ukraine had committed itself to the decisions taken in the Bologna ministerial meetings. All details are available at http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/index_en.php (presentation materials at http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/tempus/events/eastern_partnership_2011_en.php)