In Ukraine, the issue of the need to reduce and reorganize various universities, institutes, academies, etc. is periodically raised. And the point is not only that some of them issue fake diplomas and thus devalue the very concept of higher education. Quite often, people with dubious academic credentials try to teach at such universities.
A vivid example of the need to fundamentally reform the system of higher education institutions in Ukraine is Hennadiy Mazur, a professor at the Department of Management and Administration of the Vinnytsia Academy of Continuing Education and a member of the Vinnytsia Regional Council from the Batkivshchyna party, writes UNN .
The mentioned Academy was a regular Institute of Postgraduate Education for Teachers. However, in 2015, the Vinnytsia Regional Council decided to change the name of the institution to a more eloquent one. In 2016, the Academy received the appropriate license and since then has been able to enroll students after completing 11th grade or with junior specialist diplomas.
In 2018, Hennadii Mazur, who headed the budget committee of the Vinnytsia Regional Council as a deputy in 2015-2020, joined the Academy.
And by a strange coincidence, since then, the amount of money allocated from the regional budget for postgraduate education of teachers has been growing every year. While in 2018, 21 million hryvnias were allocated for this item of expenditure, in 2022, almost 41.5 million hryvnias were already planned.
According to members of the regional council, the lion's share of the funds was directed to the Academy of Continuing Education.
In addition, the institution entered into separate agreements with the territorial communities of Vinnytsia Oblast to improve the qualifications of teachers.
It is also worth noting that the Academy's tuition for ordinary students is exclusively paid. To get a bachelor's degree in public administration and management, you need to pay 14 thousand hryvnias a year, for a master's degree you will have to pay 24 thousand hryvnias a year.
Returning to Mazur, according to his Wikipedia page, he is a specialist of a wide profile: a member of the Union of Lawyers of Ukraine, a member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, Honored Economist of Ukraine, professor, doctor of economics.
However, Mazur's academic credentials can be seriously questioned. In 2008, he allegedly defended his PhD thesis "Socio-economic problems of rural development and ways to solve them (regional aspect)".
Last year, journalists used the well-known anti-plagiarism service StrikePlagiarism.com to check the uniqueness of the abstract to Mazur's "scientific" work posted on the website of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. It turned out that a text similar to 77.52% was posted on samzan.net, which is a popular platform for collecting orders for writing student and research papers on a turnkey basis, and its main users are citizens of the aggressor country.
As you know, these kinds of resources often post examples of their work after a certain time, after the work has been delivered to the customer.
Despite the publicity, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine has not reacted in any way to the fact that a person who most likely did not write his PhD thesis and is a common plagiarist is teaching at one of the higher education institutions.
Moreover, now as a doctor of economic sciences, Mazur is the chairman of one of the specialized academic councils with the right to accept for consideration and conduct a one-time defense of a dissertation for the degree of doctor of philosophy.
I wonder if Mazur tells these applicants how to write a "scientific" paper without much effort
In the end, this situation brings us back to the question of the need for fundamental reform of the educational and academic spheres so that there are fewer people like Mazur: with dubious dissertations and unfounded claims to scientific activity.
Perhaps it is because of people like Mr. Mazur that Vinnytsia Academy of Continuing Education ranks 222nd in the consolidated ranking for 2023 out of 239 Ukrainian universities .
Let's also add that Mazur is now 50 years old. Despite the fact that there is no information on his Wikipedia page that he served in the army or graduated from a military department, he is conscripted during martial law. But the deputy of the Vinnytsia Regional Council from "Batkivshchyna" may not worry that he will end up at the front: as a teacher and scientist, he has armor.
Although, in the case of Mazur, his armor is not much different from the armor of a traveling circus clown...