The refutation of the accusations made by MESYSU about the releasing of unchecked facts during the admission campaign observation by Civil network OPORA

The materials were published on the official website of the Ministry of Education, Science, Youth and Sports on August, 4, 2011. Active reaction on the released facts or particular fictional accusations of public observers shows the inappropriate approach to the evaluation of admission campaign from the authors of the message. But it is worth mentioning that for the profile ministry as the chief executive body responsible for the organizing of the university admission process on the highest, state level, and the interested and rationally engaged side, such attitude is inappropriate. So, the CN OPORA can’t help paying attention to the above-mentioned material and proposes everyone to draw own conclusions considering its reasons. For its turn OPORA highly appreciates the Ministry and the State Inspection of the Universities for the quick assistance in protecting the rights of graduates or fixing the mistakes of admission boards.  

Transparency and openness of the admission campaign

In the message on the Ministry website it was stated that the observers claim about “multiple violations of the University admission terms, lack of transparency and closed nature of this year admission campaign and the “secret” of state demand for both public and graduates. OPORA claims that their delegates didn’t use the term “multiple” hence such evaluation is not very accurate, and for many times OPORA appealed to the responsible persons in the Ministry about the discrepancy of admission terms for certain universities to the general Admission terms.

As a result, the observers got the approval of discrepancy and explanations that it was impossible to implement changes to the admission rules during the admission campaign.

On the released facts OPORA made a conclusion that the Ministry can’t carefully read the admission rules for approximately 800 universities and institutes and recommended the order of their coordination.

The following refutation of the Ministry considers the closeness of the admission campaign for the graduates and observers and the lack of transparency in the state demand. The observers are ready to provide to the ministry press service the response to the information request that was sent to OPORA on July, 29, 2011 signed by the first deputy minister Yevhen Sulima. In addition to this, OPORA asks the journalists to join the experiment and proposes to send the query once more and wait for the answer in 5 days term that is guaranteed by the Law “About the Access to Public Information”. Unfortunately, neither public nor the deputies of parliament could see the full text of the decree issued by the Ministry about the state demand with all the supplements with the data, the public is interested in. The observers couldn’t get the response in the estimated terms. The text of the letter (# 1/11-6939 from 29.07.11) from the Ministry proved that the amount of the state demand is being corrected according to the contest situation in the admission campaign in 2 days before the end of accepting the documents from graduates. This situation proves the “manual management” of the process and the closeness of it for the public eye. OPORA reminds that before 2010 such decrees were openly published on the website of the Ministry.

Separate incidents

OPORA is also wondered by the vocabulary of the Ministry refutation, - e.g. that the list of recommended for the nomination in the National Aviation University was released “not only in the alphabetical order”. This doesn’t deny the fact that the published data doesn’t satisfy the Admission terms. Besides, NAU has been publishing the data about the nomination without mentioning the scores, the categories that can get some extra points or preferences etc. There are screenshots of the university web pages to prove the facts for 2010. This year the paper lists were of the same design on the information boards. Besides, the organization has some information considering the fact that the profile ministry is well acquainted with the problem and successfully helped to solve it. The above-mentioned data about the graduates has been successfully released on August, 5th, and the OPORA observers greet this.

The Ministry can’t object about the facts of inappropriate extra points given in Kyiv National University of Architecture and Building or the National Shevchenko University that were proved with the participation of the Ministry. Both universities referred to the human factor or technical bugs of the admission board, admitted the violations and succeeded in their correction. OPORA considers such reaction natural and professional hence after the communication with admission board the problem was fixed.

One of the tasks in the message was the audit of the National Pedagogic Dragomanov University. As OPORA claimed, this university was among the universities that didn’t release the examination results for some spacializations, but the audit seemingly didn’t find any violations.

Really the graduates that called on the hotline of OPORA with such a message, can approve the fact that the examination took place on July, 23, but no data was published in fixed terms neither on the information board nor on the “Contest:” IS.

Besides, OPORA addressed with the request to the system operators and got the response (# 05-08/1) that the university had sent the data of the checked tests on July, 31, so they couldn’t be released on the website before August, 1. So, considering the Decree of the Ministry of Education (# 225 from 22.03.2010) p. 4.10, that institutionalizes the fact that the checking of the tests should be finished before the beginning of the next working day of the Admission board, it is hard to understand why the results were released only in 8 days and why the ministry objects against this violation.

One more thing about the “Electronic admission 2010”

The offered system of document filing could have worked properly if there were no existing organizational and law aspects. First of all it is very strange that the successful (to the mind of the Ministry) system, whose critics is not crucial for the civil servants, worked only for 10%. If it was decently supported by the people, if it was decently made from the technical side and tested well, than the young people as the most active internet users couldn’t have ignored the “Electronic admission” for the rest 90%. But the most problematic is the legal base of functioning. But the most problematic issue is the legal base of functioning. According to the procedure of filing the applications by the graduates it is impossible to detect the person who filled in the electronic application on the website. If somebody has the particulars of the state issued certificate about the educational degree and the information on the UCEQE certificates, it is possible to file the electronic application from the graduate. We would like to remind that the right for education is the personal non-property right of the private person. According to the p. 1 of the article 272 of Civil Code of Ukraine, the private person personally performs non-property rights.

According to p. 6.12 of the University admission terms of Ukraine the familiarization of the graduate with the admission rules, the license and the accreditation certificate for the certain specialization, and giving the permit to release the results of the EIT, exams and the grounds for the graduation out of competition is fixed in the application of the graduate and approved by personal signature.

In the Article 6 of the Law of Ukraine “About the electronic documents and electronic flow of the documents” it is stated that the electronic signature is the necessary attribute of electronic document used for identification of the author by other bodies of the document flow. But none of the graduates could prove his/her application by the electronic signature because of its physical absence.

To conclude, the electronic registration of the graduates’ applications approved by the Decree # 291 from March, 28, 2011 goes against the Law of Ukraine “About the electronic documents and electronic flow of the documents”.

Conclusions

The Civil network “OPORA” insists that the co-working of the public and the central executive body responsible for the organization of the admission campaign had proved the sound mutual relations between the engaged sides. But the information line of the Ministry is curious for its “tabloidness” and tries to deface the civil organization groundlessly. At the same time the broad admission campaign can’t run without certain mistakes caused by the human factor as well. The cancellation of the least causes no credibility both in the public and in the society.