State Power in Legitimating and Regulating Private Higher Education: The Case of Ukraine

Abstract

The explosive growth of private higher education following independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 was one of many assaults against state monopolies and authority. In its epiphenomenal corollary, questions were immediately raised throughout the Ministry of Education and Science as to the raison d’être for private higher education; is it a dangerous competitor that will spawn chaos? Or if it is to exist, how must it be regulated (Stetar and Pohribny 1999). However, soon after 1991 the relationship between the state and Ukrainian private higher education became much more complex than the issue of existence or nonexistence. While Ukrainian private higher education made initial gains in legitimacy outside of the state legal and political structures, it has since become subsumed under state-imposed strictures to maintain a status of legitimacy. However, these state-imposed strictures paradoxically delegitimate even as they legitimate private higher education in Ukraine.