Higher education system reforms in Ukraine: challenges for art education

Abstract

Permanent reforms of the education system in Ukraine are conducting without high-quality strategic planning and scientific justification. It leads to stochastic processes, actualizes challenges and threats to the competitiveness of the high education industry, and the issue of many universities survival precisely of the number, permanence and groundlessness of the proposed reforms. In 2022 the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine announced another reform of higher education, which don't take into account the important role of culture as the pilar and basis for the Sustainable Development Goals achieving, and the requirements of the strategic documents of Ukraine's development. Special risks are created for higher art education, as a result of its marginalization, neglect of the importance of this education for social development and the peculiarities of the artistic higher education training. There is established that certain proposals for modern reforms, in particular regarding the list of fields of education and training, the standardization of scientific work accounting, do not meet the actual needs of society, and therefore the implementation of these changes is inappropriate. For the authorities an economy of budget funds is the main criterion for the effectiveness of reforms, and obviously these reforms do not supply the better provision of public goods por the people. Also, the priorities of the implemented reform are determined by the requirements of the loan agreement with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the main target indicators of which are unknown to the public. At the same time, the proposed changes do not contain proper scientific justifications and assessments of the expected impact on the state's ability to perform social functions, in particular to guarantee higher education as a component of the state's security chain. And most importantly, its do not contain indicators of humanitarian development as a pillars of reforms. The need to revise the goal-setting procedure and approaches to the planning and implementation of the higher education reforms is proven. The important criteria for the effectiveness of reforms should be the systematic consideration of the important role of culture in social development and the human dimension of performance indicators, as well as the positioning of higher art education as a value-shaping component of the education system.