30 March 2011, 11:04
Yesterday, the news went the round of the media that the President´s tasks are being fulfilled: five higher education establishments are among the leading universities in the world. The importance of this information for the acting Minister of Education and Culture, Youth and Sports Dmytro Tabachnyk becomes clear from the fact that it has been top news on the official website of the Ministry for two days. The matter is that according to the figures of the independent rating agency "ReitOR", five higher education establishments of Ukraine (Kharkiv National University; National Technical University of Ukraine "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute"; Donetsk National Technical University; Donetsk National University; Tavria V.Vernadskyi National University) are among the top five hundred best higher education establishments in the world.
Commenting on this information, Mykola Tomenko, Deputy Chairman of The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, stated that "ReitOR" is a Russian independent rating agency in the sector of education. However, this organization conducted the survey in the year 2009. Thus, this survey was published in 2009 with the processed data for the academic years of 2006-2007, fiscal year 2007 and calendar year 2008.
M.Tomenko also doubts the authenticity of the survey, as the rating of Moscow University in it is higher than the rating of Harvard or Cambridge Universities.
"Interesting as this survey may be, it concerns the period when Viktor Yushchenko was the President, Stanislav Nikolayenko and Ivan Vakarchuk were Ministers of Education," stressed M.Tomenko.
Commenting on the ‘sensational´ achievements of the authorities, the Deputy Chairman admitted that the Ministry had misinformed the Ukrainian society.
M.Tomenko stressed that the real state of Ukrainian education and competitive ability of Ukrainian higher education establishments can be judged by the globally recognized ratings, such as the joint survey of the Times newspaper and QS consulting agency, rating of the Institute of Higher Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and rating of the world universities "Webometrics."