Chapter 9. Undue recognition of academic achievement in Ukrainian higher education

Attestation of students for end-of-cycle credentials (diplomas)

The Law on Higher Education establishes five types of academic credentials: junior bachelor’s diploma; bachelor’s diploma; master’s diploma; PhD diploma; and Doctor of Sciences diploma. The attestation requirements for each depend on the state higher education standards for the respective discipline. The standards also stipulate the number of credits and provide a description of the study content in the form of learning outcomes.

The law also establishes a principle of publicity, binding for attestations at all levels in disciplines. This means that the defence must be public and that audio and video recordings are permitted. The attestation is carried out by an examination board according to rules approved by the Academic Council of the institution.

The attestation commonly takes place in the form of a written dissertation and oral defence. Instead of defence, the attestation for master’s diplomas can also be organised in the form of a single state qualification examination. For PhD diploma, the attestation is always carried out by an Academic Council in the higher education institution. PhD candidates have the right to select their Academic Council.

Continuous and end-of-term assessment of achievement

The results of continuous and end-of-term assessment of academic achievement matter for the academic career of students in different ways. All diplomas, be they bachelor, master or PhD, are provided with a Diploma Supplement, which lists end-of-term marks of the diploma holders in all courses they attended. The supplement also lists the courses and the number of European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) credits attained. The marks from the continuous assessment are recorded as well and contribute to the end-of-term mark. End-of-year marks matter also for the accumulation of credits and progression towards the attestation.

The end-of-year marks depend on the results of continuous assessment throughout the academic year and on end-of-year exams, which can come in different forms, depending on the course. HEIs are free to design a curriculum for each of their programmes and the scope and credits of each course, the sequence in which courses are delivered and the form of delivery, i.e. lectures, practical seminars, laboratory and individual lessons, practical exercises, consultations, independent tasks, etc., the schedule of studies, and forms of formative and summative assessment for each.

Despite the potential for a diversity of assessment forms and approaches, students and administrators of the HEIs visited by the integrity review team suggested that faculties in general adhere to the credit-modular system piloted in 2004 and recommended by the MoES in 2010, which follows the Bologna Process and European Higher Education Area (EHEA) principles and recommendations. The exams come in written form (tests, written assignments) and oral form (usually one-on-one), the choice of which depends on the predominant format of the course (lecture, seminar, individual or group work class, lab exercise, consultation, etc.).

Whatever the format of assessment chosen, the MoES guidance stresses that students should be informed in advance about the learning objectives and assessment requirements. In addition, the recommendation is to use an extended scale of assessment with the marks “excellent”, “very good”, “good”, “satisfactory”, “acceptable”, the negative evaluation is “unsatisfactory”, and “not acceptable”, apply it in all assessment settings, and record the results in the student books and all other academic records. HEIs should consider defining their marking systems in a policy document. This document should describe how the marking scale corresponds to the points-based scale of the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), and the maximum and minimum scores for each course element that is assessed (e.g. maximum score of 100 points for the core part of the course and 20 additional points for meeting optional requirements) (Table 9.1).

Because a 5-point marking scale is used by the MoES to establish student scholarship awards, ministry guidance recommends that HEIs outline how the marking system translates into a 5-mark scale (Table 9.2).

Marks in return for payments, services and favours

The most common source of risk to evaluation results in Ukraine is payments in exchange for marks, whether on assignments, papers, or theses and dissertations.

A Ukrainian civil society portal, Profrights.org, provides the information on 33 reported violations (as of 18 August 2016) during examinations in higher education that occurred in 2015 and 2016 (Profrights.org, 2016). All cases reported on this portal are verified against official records such as announcements and decisions of law enforcement bodies. These data seem to reflect only a small portion of the total scope of the problem. A recent study of the academic culture in Ukraine concludes that bribed or unfair evaluation potentially affects as many as half of all HEI students and teachers in the country (Figure 9.1).

Through interviews, focus groups and the collection of written accounts during the site visits, the integrity review team collected accounts of bribed evaluation of academic achievement. They confirm survey findings and point towards a professional environment in which manipulation of evaluation results is a common practice (Box 9.1).

Students are often the initiators in the exchange of benefits for marks. More than half of the 445 students (55%) and 41 teachers (51%) in the 2015 survey on academic culture in Ukraine pointed out that the initiative to bribe comes from the students (Table 9.3).

Figure 9.1. Students’ and teachers’ answers to the question: “Are there any cases of bribed evaluation in your department?”

Source: IED (2015), Академічна культура українського студентства: основні чинники формування та розвитку [Academic Culture of Ukrainian Student Community: Primary Factors of Formation and Development], http://iro.org.ua/uploads/96491691.pdf.

In some situations, payments are extorted by withholding due recognition for (possibly) genuine student achievements. Serhiy Kvit, Rector of Kyiv-Mohyla University, has observed, “Previously, bribes were mainly paid to get applicants enrolled at universities; now they are paid to ensure students stay there. Passing a test costs on average UAH 50 and the successful defence of coursework costs UAH 2 000 (USD 245 at the exchange rate on that day)” (Kvit, 2013).

This form of corruption, where all students must make the same payment to take a necessary step towards their degree, arises at the HEI’s or the teacher’s initiative. It is unlawful unless mandated in national law or the HEI’s own published statutes (at the time of this review there were no such provisions). It is an instance of due recognition withheld, because students will not pass unless they pay, however deserving they may be. The deserving student who does not pay will fail the exam and be expelled, while a far less deserving student with less knowledge, or who has made little effort to acquire knowledge, will pass the exam and stay at the HEI.

Money is not the only form of “payment” for favourable evaluation of academic achievement. Teachers also accept gifts, useful services or other benefits from their students. For instance, students might be expected to purchase the teacher’s books and CDs or attend additional classes (for which the teacher is paid extra) to get a mark. The pretext for the latter form of “payment” is that the teacher cannot deliver all the information during lectures, so extra fees need to be paid to gain the necessary knowledge. Also, marks are announced to students during the special paid classes; at the regular classes, marks are not disclosed.

A 2015 student survey confirmed this: 29% of students said that they personally had given presents to teachers, and 22% had provided services to teachers or bought educational materials and books offered to them by teachers (Sydorchuk, 2015). The services and favours can include: building their teacher a garage, replacing failing parts of the teacher’s car, buying sports and laboratory equipment, buying materials to repair or redecorate HEI premises (paints, linoleum, skirting boards, etc.) and bringing in stationary that their department lacks, such as office paper (IED, 2015).

Marks obtained through acceptance of false authorship

As noted in Chapter 8, false authorship is the practice of ascribing authorship which is not deserved. Between one-fifth and one-third of students buy reports, term papers or graduation theses from others and present them to the teacher as their own work. This is undoubtedly an integrity violation – cheating and plagiarism – on the part of students concerned. It is also undue recognition of achievement if the teacher knows that the work has been bought and gives the student a good mark nevertheless. By failing to carry out simple basic checks – such as comparisons with the student’s previous work – that would reveal whether the work has been bought, the teacher becomes an accomplice who knowingly inflates the achievement of the student.

There is no systematic evidence on the frequency with which teachers know that papers have been bought and yet mark them at face value. In some circumstances teacher complicity is obvious, for instance when teachers encourage students to buy theses or exam papers that they themselves have written – a frequent practice, the team was told in site visits. Students also report that teachers offer – for a fee – to provide them with papers written by someone else, and which they promise to award high marks.

False authorship as a form of student cheating – and teachers’ apparent willingness to ignore it – is particularly common in certain disciplines. The percentage of students who said that their papers submitted for marking were always or usually their own efforts was 77% in medicine; between 60% and 70% in natural, economic and social sciences; between 50% and 60% in humanitarian and technical sciences; but less than 50% in transport, pedagogy, agriculture, law and construction (the lowest at 35%) (IED, 2015). The 48% in pedagogy and 47% in law are particularly concerning, as both are professions where integrity and subject knowledge are vital.

Assessment in absentia

Some students, known as absentee or “ghost” students, receive marks for papers they did not present or courses they did not attend, typically as the result of bribery or nepotism. Systematic evidence from survey or administrative tools was not available to the review team. Those with whom the team met in site visits provided these examples:

• Teachers are given lists of names by the dean of their department, and are told that the students on the list must be given the best marks, even if they never attend classes or present papers.

• Students do not attend classes during semesters but come only for the examination, and still obtain minimum passing marks.

• Students attend for a short while after enrolment but then “complete” their courses by paying rather than attending.

• Students nominally attending one HEI full-time are actually part-time attenders at two HEIs, both of which will give them degrees.

• Absentee students have jobs elsewhere or run their own businesses.

Influence peddling for better marks

Influence peddling describes a situation where a person misuses his/her influence over a decision-making process to the benefit of a third party, in return for loyalty, money or any other material or immaterial undue advantage (Council of Europe, 1999; AALEP, 2015). Students in Ukraine may benefit from their affiliation with an important HEI administrator or local education official and receive more recognition than they deserve (high marks for poor work, diplomas despite non-attendance). This is for instance common with children of families, the members of which work in the same educational institution (“teacher dynasties”). As a student representative during the site visits noted, “Of course, if it is the son of my colleague, I am not going to give him a hard time”.

Inadequate assessment and quality assurance systems

The practices described in this chapter arise, in part, from three connected shortcomings: lack of adequate criteria for assessing student knowledge and academic achievement, lack of transparency regarding assessment results and deficient internal quality assurance mechanisms.

Ensuring due recognition of academic achievement is based on transparent principles for assessing student performance that are consistent across higher education institutions, that all higher education students understand, and that are fairly and consistently applied. In higher education in Ukraine, a common marking scale is in use, but there are not common assessment principles, assessment criteria or assessment guidance to help higher education instructors judge what mark is appropriate in a given situation.

Students and instructors acknowledge that assessment is not highly reliable. About one-third of teachers and two-thirds of students indicate that marks do not reflect or only partially reflect the “actual knowledge” of students.

Marks and marking criteria do not have to be disclosed to students. Marks are infrequently explained to students or discussed with them, according to students with whom the integrity review team met. Some HEIs allow students to teach classes in the teacher’s absence and to mark the work of fellow students. For higher degrees, marking is even more unstructured and potentially arbitrary: the review team was informed, for example, that there are no standard requirements for master’s theses.

HEI procedures for student appeals against mismarking are generally inadequate, sometimes completely absent. Where appeals are allowed, the chances of a successful appeal are extremely low, because the assessment and quality criteria are not disclosed to students. In a 2011 study on the monitoring of education quality in Ukraine, only 6 of 110 HEIs reported that they made data available providing information about marking criteria and other information that students can use to evaluate the quality of the programmes they offer (Babin et al., 2011). Where information about assessment criteria, rules and procedures exists, it is not made public (Tutko and Naumov, 2014). With no disclosure of assessment criteria, no duty to disclose and justify marks to the students concerned, and no meaningful appeal system, higher education teachers in Ukraine are free to give students any mark they choose, creating an environment that is open to abuse.

Figure 9.2. Teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the reliability of assessment results in their HEI departments

Question: “Does it happen that the students’ marks do not reflect their actual knowledge? Sometimes a student with good knowledge may get a bad mark and vice versa. To what extent, in your opinion, do the evaluation results of students in your department correspond with their actual knowledge?”

Source: IED (2015), Академічна культура українського студентства: основні чинники формування та розвитку [Academic Culture of Ukrainian Student Community: Primary Factors of Formation and Development], http://iro.org.ua/uploads/96491691.pdf

Adopting and implementing quality assurance standards could yield improvements in the assessment practices that higher education institutions in Ukraine follow. The 2014 Law on Higher Education envisaged the establishment of a dual system of internal and external quality assurance, according to which responsibility for quality would be shared between HEIs and the new National Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (NAQA) that will take over the functions of the Accreditation Commission (British Council, 2015). This intention is in line with the recommendations of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) on student-centred learning, teaching and assessment, which are followed throughout the European Union (Box 9.2), and which the NAQA is expected to adopt.

If implemented, assessment criteria and procedures would be part of the quality assurance cycle within institutions, and these would in turn be subject to external scrutiny - by the NAQA, the public and students themselves. However, Ukraine is far from meeting these standards and guidelines. At the time of this assessment, the NAQA was not yet operational, and higher education institutions had signalled their disagreement with some of these provisions (British Council, 2015). As occasionally reported during the site visits for this assessment, HEIs were concerned about the loss of institutional autonomy.

Student fees and the cost of failure

The power to influence academic results is not only about certifying the aptitude and knowledge of examinees. Assessment results can also have serious financial implications for the students and their families, because they are a key determinant of study costs. Students who fail below a certain grade average might lose their state-funded study place and fall into the category of fee-paying students. Or, if they do not lose their place, they may be forced to move to a new HEI or speciality to keep their support. Furthermore, students who do not have a state-funded place but who wish to reach the threshold of success required to change from a fee-based to a budget place are also strongly incentivised to comply with requests for financial or in-kind exchanges in return for favourable marks. Survey data shows that 41% of respondents reported the primary reason for taking an exam is to secure public financial support or avoid being expelled (IED, 2015).

Poor attendance control

Some of the most extreme cases of undue recognition of academic achievement concern absentee or “ghost” students. It is the law in Ukraine that students whose attendance falls below certain limits must be expelled and not allowed to take their degrees. However, the integrity review team was advised that there is no general, universal system of recording and monitoring attendance at Ukrainian HEIs; some HEIs had no attendance controls at all until very recently, which enabled “ghosts” to be absent without their absence being noticed. The MoES intends to request higher education institutions to tighten up attendance controls in the course of improving their quality assurance arrangements; if done effectively, this particular loophole should be closed.

Toleration of degree-buying by distance learning/extramural students

The integrity review team identified no national rules or controls in place which would require distance learning students to show evidence of studying or achieving a certain standard of learning before receiving their degrees and diplomas. Students enrolled in conventional study programmes expressed to the integrity review team resentment of the ease with which these students obtain degrees even where institutional rules exist, typically by paying in advance for a certain number of online classes which they need not complete, and/or filing an exam paper or thesis which they may not have written themselves.

“Everyone’s doing it”

One of the questions in the surveys quoted in this chapter was what specifically motivated students to “buy” marks. More than 1 in 5 students (21.7%) gave as their reason or one of their reasons “everyone does it, why should I be different?”. This can be a very powerful factor, particularly when the student is also under pressure from a teacher to do what “everyone does”; one in five students gave as their reason or one of their reasons “a teacher implies the importance of giving a bribe”.

There seems to be an entrenched culture of corruption in many, probably the great majority, of Ukraine HEIs and, once such a culture takes root, it becomes increasingly difficult for individuals, whether students or teachers, to stand out against it. Added complications are that anyone using the argument “everyone’s doing it” to persuade others to join the corrupt fraternity has an interest in exaggerating the numbers already in it; and anyone uncertain how true it is that “everyone’s doing it” cannot find out, because those already acting corruptly are bound to deny that they are acting corruptly.

The impact of low pay, multiple jobs and time constraints

Those who teach in Ukrainian higher education are paid, on average, much less than workers with a tertiary education employed in other sectors of the nation’s economy, and less, on average, than tertiary instructors in OECD member countries. In terms of statutory pay, HEI staff in Ukraine are slightly better off than teaching staff in pre-tertiary education. The starting salary in higher education is about 1.3 times higher than that of a mid-career schoolteacher, and at the top of the salary scale, earnings are 1.2 times higher than at the beginning of the academic career (Table 9.4). However, these salaries are still considerably less than those of full-time, full-year workers with tertiary education who are employed outside of higher education. Newcomers to academia earn just 40% of the average pay in the finance and insurance sector, half of the average monthly earnings of professionals in scientific and technical professions, and 30% less than civil servants. Even at the top of their statutory pay scale, academic workers still earn less than any of the professional categories included in Table 9.4 and bring home less than the average income of a typical Ukrainian household in 2015.

Unlike teachers in schools and pre-schools, HEI staff does not have the option of compensation payments for additional activities. As already discussed, a combination of such payments can boost income substantially. The only alternative to raise their standard of living is to supplement the base salary with secondary jobs that might include, for example, fee-based expertise provision, private tutoring, authoring of textbooks, curating and editing of publications, fundraising and affiliation with non-governmental organisations.

There is no data on the extent of multiple jobholding in Ukrainian HEIs. However, all academic staff that the integrity review team met during the site visits was involved in secondary, income-generating activities, in many cases in addition to holding multiple positions in their own departments. One striking example was a senior lecturer in one of the regions visited by the review team who was in charge of research, lecturing and administration in her home HEI – and also teaching in another higher education institution, giving private classes, working on a textbook, and assessing textbook proposals for a publishing house.

The practice of multiple jobholding seems so widespread, that the additional revenue that it generates might have become something of a “compensating wage differential” - the additional amount of income that makes a job attractive despite disadvantages (Kaufman and Hotchkiss, 2005), such as low base salary and the uncertainty of time-bound contracts (1 to 7 years). Some interviews with new members of HEI staff during the site visits suggest that, in taking a decision to apply to a vacancy at a HEI and accept a subsequent job offer, young graduates are aware of their earnings outlook and, in advance of taking a decision, factor in the prospect of improving their situation through secondary jobs. One consequence of this is that academics are notoriously short of time. Multiple jobholding provides supplementary income and perhaps the sense of personal fulfilment, but it is highly time-consuming, and can present employees with conflicting demands between different jobs (ILO, 2004) and Box 9.3.

The shortage of time caused by multitasking affects the ability of HEI staff in Ukraine to meet some of their professional obligations, especially the proper preparation of lectures; keeping the content of lectures up-to-date in line with developments in their respective field; and providing consultations to students. Students during the site visits reported how their teachers often read pre-recorded lectures, the content of which has been the same for years, as visible in the notes of previous generations of students that are now used as scripts for exam preparations. This is not surprising. Beyond the initial effort of preparing them once, pre-recorded lectures do not require preparation by teachers and can be delivered by anyone - an assistant or even a student, freeing up time for other, income-generating activities.

The lack of time due to multiple jobs also affects the assessment of knowledge communicated in lectures and otherwise. Good assessment/exam sessions require time for preparation, administration and verification of results. Giving low marks and even allowing students to fail might create a need for additional rounds of exam sessions, for additional support and lecturing, and maybe even the preparation of new questions and exam materials - all of which take time. Over-marking is an effective insurance against that happening.

Policy incentives to over- or under-mark

On site visits the integrity review team heard from a HEI that the MoES requires HEI teachers to assess the work of students in their class in accordance with an enforced marking distribution, which limits the proportion of students who can get high marks in any one exam. If more students than the permitted percentage do well, then some have to be marked lower than they deserve. Further exploration established that there are a number of restrictions or pressures on HE teacher marking. Some are national while some arise from internal HEI instructions. Some push marks up, some push marks down, and some do both.

Restrictions or perceived restrictions at national level include:

• Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No. 882 of 12 July 2004. This decree links awards and increases of state-funded scholarships, or stipends, to achievement of specified marks (the specified marks have been amended several times since 2004). In practice, it tends to cause under-marking, because HEIs need scholarship funds big enough to pay for all scholarships: the ministry, as budget provider, and HEI rectors, facing regular budget shortfalls, have a shared interest in limiting the calls on scholarship funds. The provisions of this decree could also facilitate withheld or undeserved recognition of academic achievement by cash-strapped and unscrupulous teachers, or those under pressure from cash-strapped and unscrupulous HEIs. An “unfavoured” student – such as one who will not pay to keep their state scholarship – could be deprived of it by the under-marking of their work, while a favoured student – such as one who will pay - could be over-marked and take up the scholarship place withdrawn from the unfavoured student.

• Letter from MoES No. 1/9-119 of 26 February 2010. This advises HEIs to follow a normal marking distribution, as set out in an illustrative marking table in an early version of the ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) User Guide. However, the recommendation has no regulatory force; it was probably not approved due to the change of Ukrainian government in 2010; and later versions of the ECTS User Guide pulled back from suggesting that a normal marking distribution was a pre-condition for international credit transfer. In practice, this recommendation – if assumed to be binding - could cause teachers to adjust student marks either up or down, depending on how many good or weak performers are in their class.

• MoES Order No. 689 of 13 June 2012. The effect of this order is to make accreditation of HEI curricula depend on at least 50% of students getting good or excellent marks and at least 90% of students getting positive marks in their tests. Its intention is to ensure education quality. Its practical effect is to encourage teachers to over-mark some students if marking puts the HEI at risk of not reaching the accreditation threshold.

• Under present regulations, government funding for HEIs assumes a minimum student-teacher ratio of 12:1. If the ratio falls below this, funding is withdrawn. Because of this, in many HEIs, teachers are instructed, recommended or warned to avoid marking students so low that they will have to be expelled. The result is undeserved recognition of achievement.

Restrictions or pressures at HEI level vary, but the examples recorded in the course of desk research and site visits for this review are as follows:

• Some HEIs regard their state-funded students as too financially important to be allowed to fail their exams and leave. If they do, those students’ places will be cut on the occasion of the HEI’s next accreditation, unless alternative students can be brought in to fill their state-funded places – which is easier for some HEIs than others. At some institutions, students with state-funded places can get away with doing no work, if they pay for all the exams. Result: undeserved recognition.

• Some HEIs regard their fee-paying students, also known as “contract students”, as too financially important to be allowed to fail their exams and leave. Contract students are particularly valuable to a HEI’s finances if they are studying in prestigious disciplines such as law and economics; these students can be charged more than their full costs so as to cross-subsidise less prestigious but important higher-cost disciplines like physics and chemistry. Result: undeserved recognition.

• Foreign students are also very important to the finances of some HEIs. Evidence from site visits suggests that they often pay as much in USD as Ukrainian students pay in UAH. HEIs fortunate enough to have recruited them will try very hard to avoid requiring them to leave. Result: undeserved recognition.

• A final reason why teachers at public HEIs may be reluctant to fail students who deserve to be failed, is that the teachers are then obliged to offer retake exams and prepare the students for them, and the time they spend on retakes is unpaid. Result: undeserved recognition. At private HEIs, the opposite may apply. The private HEI cited above which offers fee discounts for excellent student performance allows students who fail end-of-year exams to retake them, provided they pay the full cost involved.

Closing the opportunities for malpractice

Eliminating the incentives for malpractice