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Find opportunities that are right for you to continue your education outside your home country.
© 2024 Freedom Degree
Freedom Degree, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. © 2024 | Powered by Strapi
Sep 24, 2024
Interview with Vilius Šadauskas, PhD
The European Humanities University (EHU), a Belarus's university in exile, has been operating in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, for 20 years. EHU was founded in Minsk in 1992, taking as a model the Western standards of education in the social sciences and humanities. This was as necessary as air for the new post-Soviet societies after decades of academic isolation. Unfortunately, the free exchange of knowledge in Minsk did not last long. In 2004, the Belarusian authorities revoked EHU's educational licence as part of a campaign to pressure civil society and universities. Nevertheless, EHU survived and managed to reassemble in Vilnius, just a couple of hundred kilometres away from its former home. It was in the European Union, with great help and assistance from the international community, first of all, the Lithuanian one.
The year 2022 was the beginning of a great challenge for the whole of Europe, including universities. EHU usually accepts young Belarusians who face repression in their homeland. But now there are many more academic refugees: students and researchers, because Ukrainians and Russians have been added to them.
We talked to people who live, study and work here – one student, one visiting professor, and the acting rector of the EHU. This is the conversation with the acting rector Vilius Šadauskas, PhD.
Hello, thank you for coming.
I enjoy my work. Since working at the EHU is difficult in many roles, especially the acting director position, I believe that anyone who chooses to join the organization should have some additional motivation. But as you are aware, there is competition for this job.
The complexity of the problems facing the EHU's rector and management is more similar to that of a business organization than that of a university. A rector is typically thought of as an individual who sits in a chair and thinks over publications and issues in scientific fields. First and foremost, you have to be an involved manager in the EHU situation. Make it daily operations, financial matters, or strategic issues, you need to serve as the CEO of a business.
Nevertheless, I like it. It fits my personality and profile. As someone who joined EHU in 2018, which is quite some time ago, I feel like I belong here. For me, it's a part of significant reforms and it reminds me more of ideas coming to reality.
I think that the main groups of students we support with the help of external donor communities are Belarusian students and Ukrainian students. But, of course, we are not limited to these categories of people, we also have students from Russia, for example. It depends on the donors. For example, the Nordic Council of Ministers supported students from Belarus, 20 students who suffered from political persecution and 20 Ukrainians who suffered from the war.
For Belarusian students, the university provides more support mechanisms and scholarships. These are funds that provide opportunities for students with low income and financial difficulties, sometimes very much related to their previous life in Belarus.
Therefore, it is important for us and for our donors that the student receiving support is highly motivated. There are situations when the level of previous achievements is low due to objective reasons, but there can be strong motivation. So, we would like to provide opportunities to students in need, to help develop talents who could not realize themselves because of political persecution.
If we talk about the classification of universities, we can rather be called an ecological university, which supports young people who need these educational tools to change their lives.
You have named the idea correctly. EHU was established in Minsk on the basis of Western standards of higher education to transform the post-Soviet system. During 10 years of work in Belarus they gained popularity due to their different approach to education and students' out-of-the-box thinking. Then for political reasons EHU was closed in Belarus and moved to Lithuania. Now the university has the status of a university in exile.
But I would say that despite the formal labeling, EHU is still a place with such an identity. The main student group is young people from Belarus, and the idea is to educate them in a different academic spirit. Critical thinking, democratic education based on values, and the fact that Lithuania is home to a fully accredited European university providing European education.
There are perceptions related to civil society, development of student activism, but this is a personal choice of particular students. EHU is primarily aimed at high quality education and development of young personalities.
It's a very complex topic which I would split into different blocks of issues.
To begin, let's look at the immigration policies. Despite close cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Freedom House project, due to the political situation and Russia's war against Ukraine, there are some limitations for the arrival of students, especially Russian students. We can call this a global issue.
Turning to practical matters, it is worth mentioning the formal requirements for higher education when students come to us. Their school transcripts may be approved by the university or agency, but when students transfer from universities in other countries, there can be significant deviations from the courses and requirements here in Lithuania. Even people who have faced political persecution experience these bureaucratic difficulties. Sometimes we have situations where the portfolio a student has completed at a previous institution differs significantly from our programs. Then the only option is to start freshman year. For some prospective students, this is a challenge because they see it as a waste of time and money. However, we must follow all formal requirements for universities.
And the third issue is that living prices in Lithuania are higher than in Belarus, which creates additional challenges for students who are coming to study in Vilnius. We have a student dormitory, and compared to previous years, the prices are different now. We are implementing some reforms, we are trying to apply indexation of social scholarships. However, if you are politically persecuted and you find a new home in Vilnius, your financial situation is rather unstable. Many people find it difficult to make ends meet. Although we do our best, we cannot help all those in need, our resources are very limited.
I think our main aim as an educational institution is to attract as many supporters as possible to our trust fund. This is exactly the mechanism that helps students cover the part of their tuition that they can't pay on their own. Some students receive grants that cover 100% of their tuition fees, others 50%, so the trust fund covers that gap. This is essential to the functioning of the university. If we want to expand our ability to attract more students, we need more resources and more partners who believe in EHU and what we do.
The second is more involvement in support mechanisms for academics. We work closely with the Open Society University, with the Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative, which is coordinated with the Central European University. Since 2020, thanks to this mechanism and the support of Finland and Estonia, we have been able to help a total of more than 85 scholars through scholarships. Beyond these remarkable achievements, we need to find other platforms and develop our integration mechanisms more strongly. We have some capacity at EHU to host at-risk scholars to conduct their research and publish their work here. But the long-term perspective can be a problem because we don't have plans to integrate people for five years, for example. In many cases, we are talking about short-term fellowships, internships, etc. So, we need to think about better inclusion that works not only in individual cases, but also in general.
In addition, the main goal is the image of the university. I have no doubt that you have heard many different opinions about EHU. At the end of the day, we need to rebuild our image so that people will believe in us. We may have to let go of some old things and approaches that are irrelevant today.
I would say that the motive for our activity should be to treat another human being humanely every time, regardless of the prerequisites. These prerequisites may be political, economic, for some it may be the need for medical care. In general, if we have the tools, if we have the ability and energy to help those in need, we should do so and find solutions. We don't know if one day we won't be among those who need help. This mutual aid is what makes us all human.
The list of programs of the European Humanities University in Belarusian, Lithuanian, English and Russian languages can be found on the official website of the University.