Check another 50 colleges: why thousands of students over 25 years old.

According to ТСН: Ukraine plans to check about 50 more colleges and higher education institutions where there is an abnormal increase in the number of students over the age of 25.

The head of the State Service for Quality of Education, Ruslan Gurak, reported this.

"We continue such checks. Several inspections are planned before the end of the year, and at the beginning of the next academic year, work will continue. It is worth checking another 50 colleges and higher education institutions. How many may be expelled? We will see based on the results," Gurak noted.

Gurak also stated that currently, the service's main focus is on colleges, as the Ministry of Education and the Verkhovna Rada have limited access to universities for potential evaders. So, most older applicants choose to enroll in colleges.

According to him, about 50,000 students have already been expelled.

He also cited statistics, emphasizing that before the war, there were about 30,000 students over the age of 25 in Ukrainian educational institutions. This included all forms of education, including vocational, higher, and postgraduate.

Currently, the number of such students has reached 250,000, which has prompted the initiation of inspections.

"That is, we are talking about an increase of 220,000 students in wartime conditions," Gurak added.

It is worth noting that students who enroll in colleges usually do so after the 9th grade at the age of 15-16, less often after the 11th grade. College education lasts four years, so there is a suspicion that all male students over 25 in these educational institutions are likely 'seekers' not of education, but of deferral from mobilization.

It was also previously reported that after the adoption of the resolution allowing boys aged 18-22 to leave the country, students increasingly use 'academic leave' to leave Ukraine.

In Lutsk, for example, more than 1,000 male students were expelled.

Recall that the rector of the Kyiv Aviation Institute, Ksenia Semenova, urged to equalize distance learning in universities with part-time education and take away deferrals from those studying online.

Inspections of educational institutions are an important step in ensuring transparency and quality of education in Ukraine. Given the increase in the number of older students, especially during the war, this situation deserves special attention. The search for ways to ensure proper control and administration of education in this challenging situation emphasizes the need for reforms in the Ukrainian education system.

At the same time, society actively discusses whether these inspections will become a mechanism for abuse and how these actions will affect the educational process as a whole. Will new rules serve as a deterrent to evaders of mobilization, or are they simply another step towards improving the quality of Ukrainian education — questions that remain open.