8 February 2018Times Higher Education 19NEWS
Europe
Australia
Nil by donations
An Australian electoral funding bill could prevent
medical research institutes from receiving dona-
tions and speaking out about important health
issues, an industry body has warned.Tony Cun-
ningham (pictured), president of the Association
of Australian Medical Research Institutes, said
that the new Electoral Funding and Disclosure
Reform Bill could result in charities, including
medical research institutes, being labelled “politi-
cal campaigners”.This is because three key
terms in the bill – political expenditure, political
purpose and public expression – would “unrea-
sonably” define a wide range of apolitical policy
development activity as “political campaigning”,
he said.This would hinder their ability to receive
donations and provide information to the public
on a wide range of health issues, he claimed.
Did you get the invitation?
A major pan-European initiative to encourage
students from beyond the continent to come
and study there was relaunched last week.
The Study in Europe programme, spearheaded
by Campus France, forms part of wider efforts
by the European Commission to internationalise
European higher education. It started in 2014
and has now been renewed for a further three
years until the end of 2020.The programme
is run by a consortium that also includes the
German Academic Exchange Service, equivalent
bodies in the Netherlands and Estonia, the
Brussels-based Academic Cooperation
Association and – even as Brexit approaches –
the British Council.Although such countries
naturally compete elsewhere for international
students, Study in Europe initiatives see
them coming together to promote the continent
as a whole.
Ukraine’s students are no
different from those in
other countries: they
want to attend world-class universities.
But world-class universities are only
possible when they unite top-notch
research and education. And Ukraine
currently has neither.
Research in the country is largely
confined to the 174 research institutes
of the National Academy of Sciences.
A plan to merge these with Ukraine’s
200 or so public universities was one of
the results of the people’s uprising that
has become known as Euromaidan,
culminating in the overthrow of the
president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014.
Students took part in the confrontations
with riot police and claimed the right to
a better education and better future in a
new, reformed country.
However, no mergers involving acad-
emy institutes have yet occurred.
Reasons include the unusual level of
autonomy enjoyed by the NAS and its
sense of being under siege from budget
cuts and officials and businessmen intent
on acquiring some of its prime assets,
estimated to be worth a total of
$40 billion (£28 billion), an astronomi-
cal figure for Ukraine. Although it is less
than half the size it was at the end of the
Soviet era, the academy still has about
40,000 employees, and its own financial
survival has become itsraison d’être.
Last year, for instance, was marked
by battles for land, fisheries and natural
reservations belonging to the academy.
Its president, Borys Paton, had to inter-
vene personally in order to prevent a
hostile takeover of the land by raiders of
all kinds, including local authorities,
businessmen and even poachers. The
Kiev premises of the research institute
that studies the safety of nuclear power
stations and deals with radioactive
materials was taken over and held for
several months by armed men who
belong to one of Ukraine’s paramilitary
nationalist battalions. Even social activ-
ists got in on the act, demanding that a
luxury Kiev furniture store that they
attacked, which turned out to be rented
from an academy institute, be given to
the Museum of the Euromaidan.
Such renting out of academy land is
not unusual. With a shrinking state
budget allocation, directors of research
institutes were quick to offer their prem-
ises – especially their ground floors – to
nightclubs, pizzerias, dentists, lawyers
and all manner of other small busi-
nesses. Such activities are not legal, butare far from the only financial irregulari-
ties in which academy institutes have
been involved. For instance, last year the
Institute of Molecular Biology and
Genetics in Kiev was accused of being
involved in embezzlement, fraud, money
laundering, nepotism and illegally rent-
ing out state property. Later in the same
year, state security services and police
raided the premises of the Paton Insti-
tute of Electric Welding, also located in
the capital, and seized 200 computers
that had allegedly been used for illegal
Bitcoin mining and were found in a
derelict swimming pool. The institute
was formerly run by the academy presi-
dent and was founded by his father.
In a 2015 interview, Ukraine’s minis-
ter of education and science at the
time, Serhiy Kvit, described the NAS as
“a state within a state”, which has had
“a special kind of autonomy since the
days of Stalin. In the Soviet era, the
Communist Party controlled all of
our research activities, but now the
Communist Party has disappeared and
the state does not know what the
National Academy does.” The acade-
my’s numerous specialised units were
established to serve different branches of
Soviet industry, but Ukrainian industry
has been dying for the past quarter of a
century, so the institutes have lost their
purpose.
Yet instead of trying to revive and
repurpose the academy, the government
introduces further budget cuts and
layoffs – all while demanding to know
when it will produce a Nobel prize for
Ukraine. As things stand, there is little
point merging dysfunctional research
institutes with corrupt teaching-focused
universities that are more akin to US
community colleges than Humboldtian
research universities. Until decisive
measures are taken to reform both
sectors, the hope for a better future that
inspired the Euromaidan revolution will
not be fulfilled.Ararat L. Osipian is a fellow of the
Institute of International Education in
New York and an honorary associate in
the department of political science at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. He
spent the past four years studying
academic corruption in Ukraine.Euromaidan hopes remote
World policy