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Kyiv university vice-rector asks Commission to allow country’s institutions to receive EUI funding
The EU’s scheme for financing cross-border collaboration between higher education institutions should be “adjustable” to allow support for Ukraine’s involvement, a senior leadership figure at a university has said.
The European Universities Initiative, which helps set up alliances working on projects such as joint campuses and courses, has funded 44 such groups since 2019, involving 340 institutions in both EU and non-EU countries.
But institutions in Ukraine are not allowed to receive funding from the EUI and have to finance activities themselves, according to Kseniia Smyrnova, a vice-rector at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
She said during the European University Association annual conference at the Gdańsk University of Technology in Poland (pictured) on 20 April that “the rules and methods of including Ukrainian universities in the EUI should be adjustable” to factor in the country’s unique situation.
Smyrnova’s university is involved in one such alliance. “From one side, we are a de facto partner, and we are [positioning] ourselves as a committed institution to be inside the alliance,” she told Research Professional News.
But Smyrnova added: “Another side of the coin is that under the [rules] we are not eligible to obtain the direct financial support to do mutual things within the alliance, so we are doing it pro bono.”
She urged the Commission to make Ukrainian universities eligible to receive funding, which she said could “fill in” a “crucial gap” in lost state university funding amid Russia’s invasion.
“Really, these rules should be adjustable,” she said.