EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND VALUES OF DEMOCRACY

Abstract

The article analyzes the intellectual and social potential of the system of higher education in Ukraine by considering its legal framework in the form of the main profile law.
The purpose of the work is a critical analysis of the conceptual foundations of the organization of higher education in modern Ukraine and the identification of its primary flaws that prevent it from reaching the proper level capable of ensuring the competitiveness of Ukrainian society in the global world.
Methodology. The analysis of educational policy is not carried out by considering the current state of the educational system, but by identifying the conditions for the possibility of educational practices (transcendentalist approach). In other words, it is not the actuality of education that is analyzed, but its development potential. Due to the content impossibility of covering the entire educational system in one review, the author resorts to two methodological limitations: (1) focus only on the phenomenon of higher education; (2) the theoretical reconstruction of the potential of education should be carried out by analyzing the legal basis that determines the regulations for the existence of the educational system.
Scientific novelty. In the article, the socially transformative potential of education is revealed through the analysis of its normative basis in the form of the main law regulating activities in the field of higher education. Thanks to this approach, it was found that the existing legal regulation cannot serve as a productive basis for the organization of higher education in accordance with the needs of the development of a modern democratic society. This circumstance is one of the key factors that limits the potential of the Ukrainian university and causes the actual stagnation of the country's educational system.
Conclusions. Despite the improvement of the regulatory and legal provision of higher education by the current specialized law, it preserves some outdated, even apparently archaic and ineffective forms of organization of scientific and educational activities, does not create opportunities for deep qualitative transformations in the educational sphere and, while optimizing the existing situation, at the same time legislatively does not solves the main acute problems of Ukrainian higher education. However, it is not just about the shortcomings of the law «On Higher Education». The subject of analysis in the article was made possible by its regulatory and legal basis. The theoretical reconstruction of the potential of higher education in Ukraine and its development prospects leads to the conclusion about the still existing and not overcome archaic, moral and conceptual obsolescence of the Ukrainian university model. The law demonstrates the lack of effective state and political will to build a modern, competitive education system in Ukraine. The model of higher education, legitimized by this law, is neither able to ensure the educational process through participation in scientific research (which is a fundamental requirement of university education), nor to contribute to the strengthening and development of Ukrainian democracy, strengthening the role and influence of democratic values in public life, nor to contribute to the regime of productive training in accordance with modern opportunities for mobility and the global educational space.