Higher Education and Science Law to Enter Judicial Phase

The examination of the compliance of the "Higher Education and Science" law with the Constitution has entered the judicial phase. The court hearing will take place on July 20. This information comes from the official website of the Constitutional Court.

Recall that the President had appealed to the Constitutional Court on April 22 to determine the law's compliance. It has been noted that the studies and expert opinions conducted by the Office of the President concluded that certain provisions of the law are seemingly problematic from a constitutional perspective.

Furthermore, it should be mentioned that the "Higher Education and Science" law had also become a subject of outrage and serious criticism within the academic and scientific community. Many organizations, particularly the Public Council, the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, the presidency of the trade unions of RA universities, the Human Rights Defender, the student council of Yerevan State University, and several other educational institutions, qualified certain provisions of the law as concerning and unacceptable, claiming they violate university autonomy and academic freedom.

Dissatisfaction primarily focused on the election of rectors and the representation ratio in the Board of Trustees (5 out of 9 board members will be represented by the Government and the Ministry of Education, while 4 will represent the university). Recently, we also reported that the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports decided not to wait for the Constitutional Court's decision and initiated a governmental decision to reduce the composition of the councils of 12 universities with foundation status and to change the representation ratio.

According to the new rules, in a 20-member board of trustees, the Government and the Ministry will have 13 representatives, while there will be 7 coming from the academic and student bodies. The draft of this governmental decision was accepted on May 4, initially for only 3 universities (Yerevan State University, Pedagogical University, Shiraq State University), while the draft concerning the remaining 9 universities remains in the public discussion phase.

This change proposed by the Ministry has also received criticism from several organizations. Specifically, the Rectors' Council, the Scientific Council of YSU, and the Human Rights Defender expressed their principled disagreement regarding the decision. The Human Rights Defender was preparing to file a complaint to the Constitutional Court against this decision.

Education sector officials claim that the previously existing representation rule of 25 percent for councils does not justify itself and does not contribute to resolving the existing crisis, particularly at YSU. They insist that the autonomy of the educational institution is threatened when the Government and the Ministry have a greater number of members in that governing body. Meanwhile, Minister Vahram Dumanyan believes that this is how it should be in a state-established educational institution, and that is correct.