At the end of February, Lviv Polytechnic students will receive their scholarships according to the Provision for scholarships approved by the University Academic Board. The reason for its approval was the fact that the Cabinet of Ministers ruled that only 40 – 45% of students, whose tuition fees are paid from the state budget, can be entitled to receiving scholarships.
The scholarship is bigger, the number of students receiving it is smaller
From now on, minimal scholarship amounts to 1,100 hrn, increased one – 1,601 hrn. Students of certain specialities will receive 1,400 hrn and 2,037 hrn. In Polytechnic, this refers to those who study sciences about the Earth; Electric Power Engineering, Electric Engineering and Electromechanics; Nuclear Power Engineering; Heat and Power Engineering; Applied Physics and Nanomaterials.
Scholarship commissions of each institute make a rating list according to the results of the end-of-semester exams. For the first year undergraduate students and for the first year students pursuing a Master’s degree, this rating is formed according to the specialities, for other students – according to the majors.
– According to this, top 45% most successful students will receive scholarships. Personally I insisted on 40%. Why? Because those 5%, which remain at our disposal could be allotted for students’ trips to participate in competitions and contests, for nominal scholarships, to help those students, who are ill or have financial difficulties. Until now, we had additional 10% to the scholarship fund for such expenses. Now the state will not allot it, – explains Professor Orest Lozynskiy, Head of the scholarship commission.
One more characteristic feature of the changes to receive, at least in Lviv Polytechnic, is that earlier students had to have at least 71 points score to receive scholarships, and now it depends only on your place in the rating list.
According to the Cabinet of Ministers regulations, a student rating has to be composed of at least 90% of his/her academic progress and up to 10% – possible additional points. It is 95% and 5% respectively for Lviv Polytechnic students. That means that in order to calculate a student’s academic progress, the rating semester grade is multiplied by 0.95, and additional points – by 0.05. These points are added and we receive a student’s rating. Of course, the rating semester grade can only be the result of a student’s academic progress. Additional points can be obtained through participating in conferences, competitions, public life of the University or your institute, sports. Each index has a certain number of possible points.
An excellent student without a scholarship and a satisfactory student – with a scholarship
Such controversial situation is waiting for excellent students that study together with bright students, and it is quite comforting for those who have people with low score before them in the rating list.
The thing is that the Provision of the Cabinet of Ministers does not say whether the right to receive a scholarship should be limited by a certain grade. An educational institution has to determine this on its own. Such limitations have been lifted in Lviv Polytechnic because the representatives of student self-government, who are members of the scholarship commission, insisted on that. The argument of those in favour is that more students will receive scholarships. Thus students, who earlier with the score of 58 – 60 points, could not even dream of a scholarship, can have it now (for example, at certain majors in IEMT or ITREE). However, architects, economists, IT students have suffered. At certain majors, students with 80 – 86 points score have lost scholarships.
One more controversial situation is with the candidates for increased scholarships. From now on, only excellent students are entitled to such payments. So a student with more than 93 points score, who has got a B in some subject, will receive a regular scholarship. However, his/her friend, an excellent student, will receive an increased scholarship, although his/her rating score is a little more than 90 points. On the other hand, an excellent student, whose rating score is 88 points, will receive a regular scholarship.
One more important condition for a student to be entitled to a scholarship is the fact that he/she has no academic backlog. That means that, if a student has a good academic progress, but he/she failed one exam and retook it with a high grade, he/she cannot be entitled to a scholarship.
Achilles’ heal of social scholarships
Besides an academic scholarship, there is also a social scholarship, which does not depend on the student’s place in the rating list. A student belonging to a certain category is entitled to it. These categories include orphans and children deprived of parental care, people who suffered from Chornobyl disaster; children of miners who have worked underground not less than 15 years, or, if their parents-miners died as a result of industrial accident or became disabled (invalids of the 1st and 2nd groups); people who are participants of military action and their children; children, one parent of whose died (is missing) in the area of antiterrorist operations, military action or armed conflicts; children, one parent of whose died in mass actions of public protest; internally displaced people. While this article was being written, the Cabinet of Ministers added to this list disabled children, invalids of the 1st-3rd groups, children from the families with low income status. It also includes social scholarships according to Verkhovns Rada’s decision. However, there is no respective provision for this as yet.
Inna Uholkova, a leading specialist in the Accounting Department of Lviv Polytechnic, has informed us that the question of social scholarships is rather sore because they are not paid on time. So far there have not been any payments for January. To receive a social scholarship, you have to gather a lot of documents, which will be thoroughly checked not only in Lviv Polytechnic Accounting Department, but also in the Department of Social Security. First of all, they will try to find out whether the student has no academic backlog and whether he/she hasn’t received an academic scholarship, since a student can be entitled to only one type of scholarship. The exception could be for orphans, who can receive two types of scholarship at the same time. Social scholarship for orphans, who study at higher educational institutions of the 3rd and 4th level of accreditation, is 2,000 hrn, and for other categories – 1,000 hrn.
As a conclusion
Rating lists of budget students, who are entitled to an academic scholarship according to the results of the winter semester exams, have already been drawn up. You can see them at the notice boards of your institutes or on Polytechnic website. According to the Ministry of Finances logic, changes in paying scholarships should encourage students to study harder because from now on, they will compete with each other in order to receive a scholarship. Whether it will be like this, whether the quality of studying will not become lower as a result of students’ trying to get part-time jobs, and whether scholarship will be paid to those who deserve it – time will show.