Higher education reforms and center-periphery dilemmas: Ukrainian universities between neo-Soviet and neo-liberal contestations

The awakening of the civil society in Ukraine has called national universities to play a major role in social and economic transformations aimed at eliminating post-colonial legacies and accelerating the country’s European integration. However, the higher education system of Ukraine used to be on periphery of “knowledge empires” (Altbach PG, Empires of knowledge and development. In: Altbach PG, Balán J (eds) World class worldwide: Transforming research universities in Asia and Latin America. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1–30, 2007), controlled by various imperial forces over the last few centuries. Will the marginalized academe be able to help their country reverse the relegation trends in economy as much as in building civil society? The analysis draws on the literature and document analysis pertaining to higher education transformations, and interviews with professors at the leading universities in the cities of Kyiv and Lviv, in order to explore cumulative disadvantages, as well as seek opportunities for reform leverages. The analysis is framed by focus on tensions between neo-Soviet and neo-liberal reform approaches in the post-colonial higher education, which have incompatible perspectives on academic freedom, grassroots initiatives, and structural innovations. Copyright © 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.