“Hot Introduction-2010 ″: broken doors, lost nerves and… students’ lack.

On August 18, 2010, a press conference was held at the Pure Policy Expert Club on the results of a public survey of the introductory campaign in higher education institutions of Chernihiv region in 2010.

Observation takes place as part of the National Monitoring Campaign, whose participants are the Opora Civic Network and the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, with the assistance of the International Renaissance Foundation and the Alliance of Independent Testing Program in Ukraine (USETI Legacy Alliance). The partner of the monitoring campaign in the Chernihiv region was the Polissya Foundation for International and Regional Research.

According to Yuri Vdovenko, the Vice President of the Polissya Fund, the attention of public observers was focused on respecting the rights of entrants to free and equal access to higher education, timely and full execution of the admission committees of all stages of entry, openness of information about the reception of documents and transparency. In Chernihiv, monitoring was carried out at the Chernihiv National Pedagogical University. TG Shevchenko (CNPU).

According to Yevgeny Romanenko, the coordinator of the observation project in the Chernihiv region, the course of the introductory campaign in the CNPU took place as a whole without significant violations. All stages and timing of submission of documents, procedures for promulgating the course of the introductory campaign are complied with in full, there are no cases of providing preferences to individual entrants or facts, when the entrant was required to provide documents outside the approved list or pay “charity contributions”. The Admissions Committee of the University promptly provided data to the information system “Contest”, which allowed each entrant to track changes in the lists of applicants for a student ticket, actually exercising their public control. According to E. Romanenko, it is the openness of the rating of entrants that contributed to a significant reduction in corruption.

At the same time, the organization of documents this year costs considerable nerve efforts to entrants and their parents.

E. Romanenko: – this year the term of reception of documents to the university of Ukraine is reduced to 2 weeks (instead of 1 month). Initially, the entrants were given time to submit documents from August 15 to August 31, and if the entrant chose a specialty that envisaged entrance tests, then he had only a week (July 15-22). In addition, this year’s innovation was a restriction of up to 5 of the number of higher education institutions, where one entrant is entitled to submit documents, and each university could write applications for 3 specialties. In other words, one child was given 15 chances for admission and many entrants decided to use this opportunity in full. As a result, in the first days of the introductory campaign, an unprecedented influx of those wishing to apply. In particular, July 15-16 formed huge queues of entrants and their parents. On Friday, July 16, the crowd was so dense before the admissions committee premises that they did not withstand good oak doors – they were simply broken. All this happened against the background of the terrible heat and lack of drinking water (the dining room and the CNPU did not work during the introductory campaign).

The entrants spoke about cases where in the lobby of the university, where they certified copies of documents and conducted vocational interviews, the children lost consciousness. The parents of some entrants who either sought to push their “child” outside all queues and arrangements, or too loudly and emotionally concerned with the procedure of paperwork and queue, were periodically “warmed”.

The result of significant public resonance of the course of the first days of the introductory campaign was the decision of the Ministry of Education on the extension of 5 days of time of submission of documents. However, on the date of publication of the order of the Ministry of Education and Science No. 735 of 23.07.2010, the load on the entrance commissions has already begun to fall, and on additional days of reception of documents in the NPPU, an average of 5-6 was given on additional days. That is, the prolongation of the timing of the admission committees directly during the entry did not significantly affect the decrease in the activity of entrants. Many graduates used the “bonus” days to “just case” to submit documents to another or two higher education.

No less pressing problem for entrants was the lack of data on the volume of state order for specific specialties in the university in the first days of the introductory campaign. This did not allow the entrants to navigate the situation with the competition. For example, information about the lack of dezhmation on the specialty “Sociology” in the CNPU appeared only in the second week of reception of documents, and entrants who planned to study at the expense of the state budget, wasted one of their chances of becoming a student.

Again, in the first stage of the campaign, there were technical problems with access to the competition information system. Due to the conflict of providers, not all consumers could go to www.vstup.info and get acquainted with its content on July 19 and 20. Fortunately, the 21 days of the problem have already been eliminated. On the day of the rating lists – August 6 – the work of the system was almost blocked due to a huge influx of visitors. In addition, not all universities promptly placed rating lists on their own sites. Yes, information about the ratings of entrants on the Internet page of the CNPU Admissions Committee became available on August 6 only at about 13.00.

According to the results of the procedure of submission of documents Chernihiv National Pedagogical University. TG Shevchenko accepted statements from 3.5 thousand entrants, which is 1 thousand more than last year. It would seem that no problems with the set of licensed students should have arisen. However, as a result of the 5 days allocated to the entrants for the submission of the original documents after the announcement of the rating of entrants (6-10.08.2010), it turned out that three specialties have even vacant places of government order! It turns out that a large competition was provided not by entrants, but by their statements, which not only reloaded the work of the admissions committee, but also did not allow the entrants themselves to determine the real picture of filling places in the specialties even in the last days of submission of originals. As of August 17, in the CNPU – one of the leading universities in the region – vacant places of government orders have already been filled, but the university still has about 200 places of licensed volume, which by August 25 can be enrolled.

So, this year’s introductory campaign, which was rich in innovations and costs its participants considerable effort, has every chance to end with some universities with students’ disadvantages.

Source: Romanenko Eugene,