The National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance (NAQA) greatly appreciates the comments and suggestions on the proposed Procedure for the annulment of decisions of specialized academic councils to confer a research degree developed by Professor Lear Wortham and supported by USAID. NAQA is pleased to get to know that Prof. Worthham considers the proposed Procedure to be an excellent document “which does a good job of the tough task of balancing considerations involved” and prizes the inclusion of the regulation “there are potential consequences, not only to the person who submitted it but also, to the dissertation supervisor, those who provided positive assessments of the paper, the head of the Specialized Academic Council …”. The National Agency also values Prof.Wortham’s suggestions including to address the problems with ghostwriting and contract cheating. This issue has been raised and discussed at the NAQA meetings and ‘ghostwriting’ was identified as a serious problem which should be regulated by the Ukrainian legislation. The National Agency will put efforts to contribute to this issue solving.
We thank USAID for fruitful collaboration and support and Professor Lear Wortham for the review of the proposed Procedure and prepared Report which is available at link.