Ararat Osipian
Fellow 2023/2024
Higher Education Policy
Kyiv School of Economics
New Europe College, Bucharest
araratos@yahoo.com
Bio
Ararat L. Osipian is a Founding Fellow of the New University in Exile Consortium at the New School University, New York, and a Sustaining Ukrainian Scholarship (SUS-VUIAS) Fellow at New Europe College-Institute for Advanced Study, Bucharest.
He has extensive research experience in such countries as the USA, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Canada, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Canada, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Ukraine.
Dr. Osipian holds a PhD in Economics of Education and Human Development from Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt and an MA in Economics from Vanderbilt University, where he came as a fellow of the US Department of State.
Dr. Osipian is the author of Sustainable Economic Growth in Russia: A Structuralist Approach (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), The Economics of Growth in Russia: Overcoming the Poverty Trap (Routledge, 2023), Political and Economic Transition in Russia: Predatory Raiding, Privatization Reforms and Property Rights (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), The Political Economy of Corporate Raiding in Russia (Routledge, 2018), and The Impact of Human Capital on Economic Growth: A Case Study in Post-Soviet Ukraine, 1989-2009 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
His articles and reviews appear in Asian Politics & Policy, Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal, Canadian and International Education Journal, Capital & Class, Communist and Post-Communist Studies and many others.
He is also a winner of several awards, including grants from Edmund Muskie/FSA, Institute of International Education, Soros Foundation, Open Society Institute, Yale, Vanderbilt, University of Wisconsin-Madison, George Washington University, Volkswagen Stiftung New Europe College-Institute for Advanced Study, and Central European University.
His research interests include corruption in higher education and inequalities in access to higher education in international perspective, corporate, property and land raiding, nexus of education and economic growth, modern welfare states and political economy of transition.
World Bank comes to Ukraine: University mergers, protests, corruption, and war
Ukraine continues its struggle for independence. In order to strengthen its statehood and sovereignty, Ukraine has to make many steps, including forming world class universities. It is hard to find a single country on the world map that does not have world class universities, and yet enjoys the benefits of strong statehood and national sovereignty. In addition to financial, technical and military aid, international help is needed to form autonomous world class universities in Ukraine. After many years of inaction, the World Bank finally comes to Ukraine’s higher education sector. The World Bank comes with a large project, with approved $200 million loan, announced in May 2021. The project begins in the fall of 2021 and will last until the end of 2026. The project, entitled “Ukraine Improving Higher Education for Results Project,” has the objective to improve the efficiency, conditions for quality, and transparency in Ukraine’s higher education system. The project facilitates university mergers. However, there is no certainty regarding the understanding of the true magnitude of the problems on the ground, as corruption remains a serious problem in the post-Communist higher education sector. When it comes to the project implementation, the World Bank will unavoidably face the challenges of over-bureaucratization, institutional rigidity, Stalinist legacies, and corruption. Furthermore, a not-less-significant challenge—the full-scale military aggression against Ukraine that started in February 2014 and drastically amplified in February 2022—makes the realization of the World Bank project even more difficult, if not impossible.