Increasing the public participation in the university's governance is the one of the key element of the higher education transformations in the Eastern Europe. Ukraine and Moldova have achieved essential progress in seeking for university autonomy and public participation in higher education sector, the implementation of the common European Higher Education Area principles in Belarus is of the far perspective.

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The monitoring conducted by the international experts team from Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and Lithuania was focused on juridical background of the stakeholder's involvement in the university's governance, modes of the higher education management, university autonomy and public participation practices. The education area democratization and social partnerships expansion in the university's governance remains the cornerstone issue for Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. The most important objective of the countries’ civil society is to create the instruments for influencing democratization and governance decentralization processes in education at large and in separate institutions.Ukraine and Moldova have achieved essential progress in seeking for university autonomy and public participation in higher education sector. The main challenge now is the proper implementation of the recently adopted legislation into the everyday academic practice. The Belarusian case is significantly different. The official ideology and legislation encourage the constant state interference into education process participants’ relations.  Though Belarus recently became a member of the Bologna process, there is still a long way to go towards the Common European Higher Education Area ideas implementation, including the idea of the academic autonomy, and there are no indications to believe to that this will happen in the observable future.

Recommendations

Belarus Recommendations to National Assembly (Parliament):

• - to adopt a new version of the Education Code and related laws;
• - to decentralize higher education management and redistribute authorities powers;
• - to pass the right to develop educational policy from the President to the National Assembly under the condition that the interests of various groups will be incorporate into it;
• - to secure in the Education Code the higher education stakeholders rights to participate in higher education institutions management;
• - to establish universities accountability to the academic community and other higher education stakeholders;
• - to secure in the Education Code the universities’ collegial bodies rights to decide on major issues: universities’ development strategy, financial matters, personnel and academic policies;
• - to legalize democratic procedures in forming universities government bodies;
• - to secure guarantees for faculty and students academic freedom as well as a real institutional autonomy of universities;
• - to guarantee the independent financial support for the student self-government at various levels.

  Recommendations for the Ministry of Education and other central government bodies that have associated with them higher education institutes:  

• - to review the higher education regulatory framework in order to reduce and limit interference into the managerial, human resources, financial and academic issues of university life at the levels set by the new version of the Education Code;
• - to establish Public Advisory  Council associated with the Ministry of Education to provide an equal partnership and stakeholders participation in the higher education management;
• - to ensure the democratic procedure while establishing this Council and its independence from the Ministry and other government authorities.

  Recommendations for the Student Associations and student self-government Bodies:

• - to pursue the legislative recognition of the student self government legal status, powers and mandatory funding rules;

• - to ensure the compliance with set norms for student representation in the higher education institutions’ governing bodies;

• - to control the compliance with democratic norms in terms of student representation and student self-government;

  Recommendations for NGOs:

• - to monitor the legal norms and regulations implementation to insure the equal partnership and public participation in higher education management and in the universities itself;
• - to pursue the procedures modification for  establishing and empowering the Public Councils to ensure the civil society organizations representation in them;
• - to pursue the Public Advisory Council establishment under  the Ministry of Education

  Recommendations for Employers Associations:

• - to promote actively their representatives in sectoral bodies  for professional standards development;
• - to participate in developing professional standards for higher education quality management.

Ukraine Recommendations to Rada (Parliament) to make amendments to the current legislation:

• - to balance powers within the university governing bodies system, based on the subsidiarity principle under which management of higher level takes responsibility and authority only if at a lower level that cannot be implemented or their implementation would be less effective.

• to exclude possibility for the Rector to be the head of Academic Council, and for the administrative staff to be Academic Council members.

• - to make mandatory that candidates’ programs for the rector’s position when elected, should become an appendix to candidate’s contract with the Ministry.

• - to reduce the votes threshold for rector’s dismissal from the standard 2/3 of total number of voters at supreme public self-governance collegial body  to a simple majority.

  Recommendations to Ministry of Education and Science and universities authorities:

• - in order to strengthen the supervisory boards position at universities employers and the HEI graduates participation should be allowed;
• - to empower supervisory boards with real powers to control the university budgeting, expenditures, payroll and the development strategies implementation;
• - to improve the strategic planning quality, including presentation of the tangible and intangible benefits, financial performance reports, savings offers and efficient resources use plan;
• - to increase the level of transparency and accessibility to administrative and financial information, including open financial statements according to the common practice in Western universities;
• - to provide open adequate information on curricula and syllabus  content, faculty members profiles and expected learning outcomes and professional competences, which can be easily accessed;

 Recommendations for the Student Associations and student self-government Bodies, NGOs, and Employers Associations:

• - to increase awareness of reform mechanisms and set goals among key stakeholders;
• - to step up data collection about industry and its quality analysis, and management’s quality improvement at all levels and demand the labor force quality improvement;
• - to decrease or eliminate demand for low-quality education among students and faculty.

Moldova Recommendation for Central governmental authority:

• - to expand and detail regulatory base for higher education democratization and more clearly define social partners and other stakeholders’ role in higher education management.
• - to set necessary conditions and administrative mechanisms for cooperation between higher education institutions and civil society organizations.
• - to develop a legal framework for establishing Board of Trustees as one of higher education management structures.

 Recommendation for Ministry of education and universities authorities:

• - to allocate budget for student self-government bodies on annual basis.
• - to introduce more ‘hands on’ approach and detailed regulatory basis for cooperation with Parents Organizations/Associations and their participation in decision making and higher education management itself.