YSU ACADEMIC COUNCIL DIDN'T EXPRESS UNANIMOUS OPINION ON RA DRAFT LAW ON HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

Unable to come to a conclusion, it was decided to organize the discussion of the RA Draft Law on Higher Education and Science next Friday.

It should be reminded that in December YSU Academic Council set up a committee that coordinated the recommendations of the RA draft law on Higher Education and Science, then worked out a draft on which the council should express its opinion.

Gagik Ghazinyan, Chairman of the Committee on Legal Acts Development and Expertise presented the systemic problems in the project, remarks on the individual adjustments proposed by the project, as well as suggestions for making changes there.

The members of the Scientific Council expressed their positions, disagreements about the draft and came up with new proposals.

There were speeches on the draft.

Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies Ruben Melkonyan disagreed with the wording of the draft submitted by the committee.

According to the wording, "there may be cases when people with a candidate's degree are better able to perform management functions but they are exceptions  than regularity", considering that government skills are not related to a degree. but also agreeing that the rector of the university should have the highest scientific degree possible.

In response, Gagik Ghazinyan mentioned that there are models in which the Rector acts as a manager, rather than head of scientific and educational processes, coordinator.

Dean of the Faculty of Informatics and Applied Mathematics offered to present clearly whether the draft law is finally acceptable by YSU Academic Council or not.

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Gegham Gevorgyan noted that the second paragraph of the opinion, which is about the justification of the project, contains provisions that are not true, and proposed to remove it.

Gagik Ghazinyan said, that there have been complaints about it, but without that point the opinion on the draft law would be baseless.

Acting Director of the Institute of Pharmacy Ashot Saghyan, speaking about the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, noted that the provision that the institutes are given autonomy is not understandable.

According to the Dean of the Faculty of Sociology of YSU Artur Mkrtichyan, the draft law was initially incomplete, as no relevant researches and inquiries were carried out.

According to Gagik Ghazinyan, in order to have a perfect law, the process of preparing  must involve a situation study, a conceptual basis, a justification of the proposals, a resource assessment, and a clear definition of ways to achieve this goal.

Summing up the speeches, Gagik Ghazinyan said that the emotional speeches were similar to the current NA speeches. Gegham Gevorgyan urged not to make comparisons.

The Dean of the Faculty of Law inquired of the acting Rector whether he would agree to a common opinion or not.

Gegham Gevorgyan noted that the university is not obliged to express a unanimous opinion on the draft laws.

G. Ghazinyan said that if the Scientific Council does not want to express a united opinion, let it vote, if not, let a new commission be formed.

YSU acting rector said that after break he decided that the discussion should be resumed and a new commission should be formed.

It was decided to hold a meeting of the Scientific Council next Friday to discuss proposals to the draft law.

Gegham Gevorgyan, Ruben Melkonyan, Vahe Hovhannisyan and Armen Tadevosyan are the members of the new commission.