04 July 2026
(PHOTO: Life in Odessa)
A week ago, Odessa Mechnikov National University decided to reorganize its faculties, a move that sparked significant public reaction.
Akcenty has compiled the university’s official position and comments from prominent alumni to make sense of the situation.
Serhiy Hutsalyuk , former head of the Southern Branch of the Institute of National Remembrance,believes that with this decision, the university has destroyed the center of the Southern Ukrainian school of Ukrainian history.
Fundamental research has always been conducted there, at the Department of Ukrainian History and the Faculty of History. The entire Southern Ukrainian school of history is modern; it was centered there. I’m curious to see what will become of it. Now, these so-called reformers at Mechnikov University also bear responsibility. In time, you will be held accountable both to history and to the people. Either you have completely eliminated the Ukrainian—or rather, the Southern Ukrainian—school of scholarship, or you will reform it. We’ll see. I think you’ll have to answer to history. Either you’ll make your mark there, or you’ll get yourself into trouble there.
Serhiy Hutsalyuk
Another university graduate, journalist Leonid Frantseskevich, sees things differently. In his opinion, closing the departments isn’t the best move, but it’s justified.
There are objective circumstances that we simply cannot change at the moment. As far as I’m concerned, this reorganization is truly relevant right now and is really very necessary, because in these difficult times we’re living in, with the problems many universities are facing, the number of<span>students—both male and female—is no longer growing. I’ve actually spoken with my friends—</span>graduates of the history department, for example. And there really are very few people there. With just 60 students—when there should be at least 200—it’s very, very, very difficult to maintain an entire building and run an entire department.
Leonid Frantseskevich
University Rector Vyacheslav Truba explained that as early as 2018, the university first encountered problems related to reorganization.
The 2014 Higher Education Act stipulates that a department must have 200 students enrolled in either full-time or dual-track programs. We were losing students in the philosophy program; we were losing students in the cultural studies program; we were losing students in the history program—that is, we weren’t actually losing them, but rather we weren’t enrolling enough students to meet the requirements of current legislation. We had the same situation in the Department of Journalism. Things are a little better there. Well, as of today, the numbers stand at 62 historians, 24 philosophers, and 38 cultural studies students in the Department of History.
Vyacheslav Truba
In accordance with the decision of the Academic Council, the reorganization was carried out by establishing new faculties at the I. I. Mechnikov Odessa NationalUniversity:
The Department of History and Archaeology was incorporated into the Faculty of History and Philology. The Faculty of International Relations, Media, and Social and Political Sciences includes:
The university insists that it continues to offer all existing educational programs at the corresponding levels of higher education.
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