State-university relations: How committed is Ukraine to the Bologna Process?

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Monday I)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Higher education in Eurasia

Proposal

The study employs institutional theory as a theoretical lens to seek an understanding of how the European regionalization of higher education affects the state-university relations in Ukraine. In 2005, Ukraine joined the largest and the most influential intergovernmental initiative to harmonize the higher education environment in Europe – the Bologna Process (Knight, 2013). By using document analysis, I will explore how and in what ways the Europeanization has changed the state-university relations. The insights from the study will advance our understanding of regionalization as an emergent global phenomenon and inform leadership on its social and policy impacts on the university governance. Second, the study will be useful for many post-Soviet countries as their efforts to balance national and international influences have much in common with institutional efforts of Ukrainian universities.
The study incorporates institutional theory to analyze how organizations function in wider institutional context, social, cultural, and political environments, which shape organizational structure, behavior, and practices (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). The focus of institutional theory on environmental influences will provide the grounds to analyze the change in the state-university relations in Ukraine in the context of the Bologna Process.
Within the framework of European regionalization, the Bologna Process intends to harmonize European higher education; strengthen its position and competitiveness; and establish a European Higher Education Area (EHEA, 2005). Therefore, Ukraine’s commitment to the Bologna Process inevitably brings the consequences for national legislation and entails profound reforms in higher education governance. The great amount of research focuses on the relationship between the state and universities: decentralization, autonomy, and self-governance of universities (Estermann, 2015; Wynnyckyi, 2015) as an explicit prerequisite for all Bologna associated reforms (Nyborg, 2003). Despite joining the Bologna Process in 2005, Ukrainian universities were legally granted autonomy only in 2014. Nevertheless, the question of whether 2014 is the year when the universities have received an actual autonomy from the state remains open. I will address this question by analyzing university statutory documents, documents on university and state policies as well as secondary sources. Therefore, I will examine the transformation of state-university relations in the context of the Bologna Process on the examples of three Ukrainian public universities.

Author

• Nataliia Zakharchuk, University of Saskatchewan