The MPs have registered in the Verkhovna Rada the bill that proposes to establish the lowest and the highest percentage of students who have the right to academic scholarships, and determine the minimum amount of academic and social payments to students. The draft law № 5612, which provides amendments to Article 62 of the Law of Ukraine “On Higher Education”, was registered by the MPs from the “Ukrainian Patriots Association – UKROP” Iryna Konstankevych, Taras Batenko, Vitaliy Kupriy, Oleksandr Dubinin, Oleksandr Shevchenko, Valentyn Didych and Victor Shevchenko. The authors emphasize that adoption of the document will make it impossible to award scholarships of the Cabinet of Ministers in manual mode.
According to the draft law, academic scholarships should be paid to not less than 50% and not more than 66% of students of each year of study (except for the first semester of the first year) for each specialty, without including those who receive social scholarships. And scholarship fund of the educational institution should provide these expenditures.
“Currently the law does not establish a guaranteed percentage of students who have the right to academic scholarships, and there are no criteria for academic achievement, which will determine whether students are eligible for benefits. Payments should be made according to the financial capacity of the budget, ie manually. We don’t want some students to have low motivation for quality education, which is an academic scholarship, that’s why we came forward with this legislative initiative,” explained Iryna Konstankevych.
The document also establishes criteria for academic scholarships: students of state and municipal institutions, who study full time on public or contractual basis and whose examinations and tests results for each academic course during semester are equal to not less than 75 points in 100-point grading scale, or 4 points in 5-point system of evaluation, or C according to the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation system (ECTS).
The minimum academic and social scholarships are offered to be calculated on the basis of subsistence minimum: minimum academic scholarship for the students of the higher educational levels (bachelor, master, etc.) cannot be less than 75% of the subsistence minimum per month, and social scholarship – not less than two thirds of the subsistence minimum. For those who study to obtain an associate’s degree, academic and social scholarships cannot be less than 50% of the subsistence minimum.
Besides, the bill states that the right to academic and social scholarships should be also granted to the students who study at the expense of private individuals and legal units.
The bill has been prepared with regard to the proposals of the working group of the UKROP party public advisory council on education, headed by the MP Iryna Konstankevych, and student community.
