Latitudes: Two years after the war in Ukraine began, what’s the latest for Ukrainian higher education?

A start-up university weathers the fighting, and displaced scholars find a new academic home. ADVERTISEMENT [Latitudes Logo]( You can also [read this newsletter on the web](. Or, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, [unsubscribe](. War alters a new university’s plans Starting a new university is no small undertaking. Starting one during a war — that compounds the challenges. Yet that’s the story of [SET University]( a Ukrainian technological institution that was founded just a couple of months before Russian forces attacked the country, in February 2022. The past two years have largely been a tragic story for Ukraine. The war has ravaged its higher-education system, as large numbers of professors, students, and researchers [fled the country]( or joined the fighting. But SET, which stands for science, entrepreneurship, and technology, is a rare bright spot. The nonprofit university has not just endured but grown, shifting its plans to offer short-term courses to meet national needs that have become more critical because of the war, and starting master’s programs in cybersecurity and computer science. “For the first few months, everyone told us that we are crazy,” said Iryna Volnytska, SET’s president. “How can you create a university when no one knows if there will be a Ukraine in a few months?” The university was founded by the [Kyiv School of Economics]( and Serhiy Tokarev, a Ukrainian tech entrepreneur. The idea behind the institution was to create an innovation ecosystem in Ukraine, giving students not just technological skills but entrepreneurship training to help them start their own businesses. While Ukraine produces a large number of programmers and coders, many leave the country for better-paying jobs elsewhere, Volnytska, a former tech executive, said. “We just sell brains.” The founders believed that more could be done to nurture and retain home-grown talent. Their initial plan was to create graduate- and undergraduate-degree programs. Then the war broke out. The fighting slammed Ukraine’s economy, throwing many people out of work. But key battles were being fought in cyberspace, the first such war in history. Demand for cybersecurity expertise soared. SET did not yet have its license from Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science to offer degrees, as government services ground to a halt. But Volnytska and her colleagues thought they could contribute to the war effort. By May, they had created a cybersecurity-training curriculum and had 350 students enrolled in short courses. They were one of the first Ukrainian institutions to start classes after the war began. The university was soon offering entrepreneurship boot camps and workshops and courses in artificial intelligence, business analytics, and digital transformation, among other subjects. Over the past two years, more than 2,000 students have completed short-term courses, including micro-master’s programs. Many of the courses are offered virtually, and instructors come from the high-tech field, from Ukrainian and international companies. SET also has a partnership with the University of California at Berkeley. In November, SET enrolled its first 50 students in full master’s programs, and bachelor’s programs are being created. The university, which receives support from the U.S. government, the European Union, and the United Nations, awards scholarships to members of the military and veterans, and offers many of its short programs free of charge. Next, SET hopes to set up in-person programs in countries with large numbers of Ukrainian refugees. The university was started with a peacetime mission, and Volnytska said the education it offers will be key to helping Ukraine emerge from the war. “I believe technology and the tech sector will be critical for Ukraine’s economic recovery,” she said. “If we don’t have higher education, it will be impossible.” ADVERTISEMENT NEWSLETTER [Sign Up for the Teaching Newsletter]( Find insights to improve teaching and learning across your campus. Delivered on Thursdays. To read this newsletter as soon as it sends, [sign up]( to receive it in your email inbox. Dissident Russian scholars find a new academic home Last week, as news of the death, in prison, of Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s main opposition leader, broke, Ilya Matveev drafted a statement. “I am devastated and crushed,” Matveev wrote, placing the blame on the government of President Vladimir Putin. Matveev, a Russian scholar and activist, ended his comments on an optimistic note: “While today feels incredibly dark,” he wrote, “I can only hope for a day when streets are named after Alexei, there is a national day of remembrance, and a memorial. This would be only fitting.” Matveev did not pen the statement in Moscow, where he grew up, or in St. Petersburg, where he was an associate professor and deputy dean of international cooperation at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Instead, he was more than 6,000 miles away, in Berkeley, Calif., where he and another dissident Russian professor, Ilya Budraitskis, are sponsored by a group of University of California faculty members. Matveev never intended to become an academic in exile. Once Russia invaded Ukraine, however, he knew it was no longer safe for him to stay in his country. He and Budraitskis had written essays critical of the Russian government and joined in public protests. He also knew he was at risk for his teaching. Matveev had kept his activism separate from his intellectual work. But in present-day Russia, teaching evenhandedly about current events, as Matveev did in a course on modern Russian politics, “still was kind of a political act,” he said. “I was not pushing any ideas or political opinion in class, just discussing the state of research at the time. But it was political because of the environment, because it was in contradiction with the propaganda.” Matveev left Russia for Turkey, where Russians can travel without a visa. He did not know what would happen next. “No one has plans anymore in Russia and Ukraine,” he said. Matveev had befriended a pair of Berkeley professors eight years earlier when he took a course by Melanie Feakins, a professor of geography, at European University, in St. Petersburg, where she was on a Fulbright fellowship. He got to know Feakins and her husband, Alexei Yurchak, an anthropology professor, better when he spent a semester at Berkeley on a research fellowship as a graduate student. Yurchak and Feakins thought it was crucial that Matveev and Budraitskis, who had also fled to Turkey, be able to continue their research and writing on authoritarianism and Russian politics. “They are the future,” Yurchak told [Berkeley News](. “Putin’s regime will collapse. We need to have these voices. And they need to be heard in Russia and the West.” They enlisted other faculty members and campus officials to sponsor the two academics, with help from the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund. Finally, after more than a year of red tape and visa delays, Matveev arrived in California last April. He and Budraitskis are now writing a book, examining Russia’s war with Ukraine in the context of Russian imperialism, and they host a Russian-language podcast, [Political Diary](. When his two-year appointment at Berkeley ends, Matveev said he would look for an academic job, in the United States or Europe. The brain drain of scholars and scientists from Russia is a blow for the country, he said. “It is another catastrophe, another disaster.” Matveev, who once organized international partnerships and exchanges, added that he hopes western academics would maintain ties with individual Russian researchers, the majority of whom, he said, do not support the Russian government. FROM THE CHRONICLE STORE [The Research Driven University - The Chronicle Store]( [The Research Driven University]( Research universities are the $90-billion heart of America’s R&D operation. [Order this report today]( to explore the scope of the American academic-research enterprise and how institutions can contribute to tomorrow’s revolutionary innovations. China asks the U.S. to stop “harassing” its students China’s public-security minister urged his American counterpart to end interrogations of Chinese students coming to the United States. Wang Xiaohong raised the issue with Alejandro Mayorkas, U.S. secretary of homeland security, during a meeting between the two countries on international cooperation. The Chinese government is upset at [reports]( that U.S. border officials have stopped Chinese students trying to enter the country at airports, including Dulles International Airport, near Washington, D.C. Some of the students have allegedly been deported. [Chinese media]( reported that Wang asked that American officials stop “harassing and interrogating Chinese students for no reason, and ensure that Chinese citizens enjoy fair entry treatment and full dignity.” A summary of the meeting released by the American side did not mention the student issue. Around the globe The U.S. Department of Education wants to extend reporting requirements to allow foreign universities that participate in the U.S. federal student-loan program to request [waivers to permit online study]( in cases of national emergencies. The Education Department had [lifted the restriction]( on online study during the pandemic. Researchers applying for grants from federal agencies will now be required to fill out a common research-security disclosure form, the White House [announced](. Meanwhile, members of Congress questioned why the Office of Science and Technology Policy is taking so long to release federal research-security standards, during a [hearing]( last week. A proposed rule would clarify and streamline [selection criteria]( for the National Resource Centers program and the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship. The Fulbright Association has established a new chapter dedicated to [community colleges](. It seeks to raise the profile of community colleges globally and to increase the number of Fulbright grants going to community-college scholars and students. Four professors have ended their affiliation with Syracuse University’s [Middle Eastern Studies program]( because of its response to the Israel-Hamas war, which they said was too equivocal. Argentina’s Congress voted against a proposal to [charge fees to international students]( saying that the government effort would violate constitutional rights to free and equitable public education. Some universities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have closed because of [fighting]( between government and rebel forces. Students also walked out of classes to protest the ongoing conflict. Nigerian lawmakers rejected a proposal that would have required public officials, including the president, governors, and legislators, to have a [bachelor’s degree](. Hindu nationalists are trying to [silence]( students and scholars at Jawaharlal Nehru University, one of India’s premier liberal institutions, from speaking out. Academics in Nepal are pushing back against a [proposed law]( that they say would allow politicians and bureaucrats to be involved in policy decisions at universities. The National Academy for International Education has inducted [new members](. Darla Deardorff, executive director of the Association of International Education Administrators, announced at the group’s annual conference that she was leaving her post to become UNESCO chair of international and global competence at Stellenbosch University, in South Africa. I’ll have more reporting from the AIEA meeting in upcoming newsletters. ADVERTISEMENT And finally … While much of my reporting is on global education, for more than six months, I’ve focused on a special project that’s closer to home: I’ve been talking in depth with some of the 40 million Americans who attended college but left without earning a degree. Many college leaders see these former students as the solution to declining higher-ed enrollment, an easy win. But that strategy is complicated: Barriers exist for these potential students, like concerns about student debt, lack of time, and confusing application processes — and many have found they don’t need a diploma to earn a decent paycheck. “If you want me to come back, make it easy, make it convenient,” one of them, a carpenter from Massachusetts, told me. “At this point in my life, I don’t need you, you need me. So treat me like it.” [You can read my article here](. (As always, [registering for a free Chronicle account]( allows nonsubscribers to read two free articles a month, and your readership supports our journalism.) You can also hear from some of the people I met, in their own words, in videos on The Chronicle’s [YouTube page](. Thanks for reading. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, so drop me a line at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. You can also connect with me on [X]( or [LinkedIn](. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can [sign up here.]( CAREER RESOURCES [Career Resources]( [Read the February collection]( to learn the secrets behind mastering the final stages of the interview process. You'll receive insights into giving teaching demos, job talks, guest lectures, and more! 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