The present stage of formation of the Ukrainian society is characterized by the:

- deepening of democratization processes in all areas;
- economic growth, which replaced the recession of the 1990s;
- further integration to the world labor market;
- desire to acquire future membership in the EU.  

 As a country which signed the Bologna declaration in 2005, Ukraine undergoes processes of deep transformation of the national system of higher education. The creation of the European Higher Education Area facilitates the transition to the three-cycle educational model. There is an increase in the number of students involved in complete or fractional training courses abroad under international agreements between Ukrainian higher educational establishments and foreign partners. Ukrainian higher education system comprises state-owned as well as private higher educational institutions. Nearly half of the students in Ukraine obtain their degrees on a commercial basis.

At the same time, there is a number of problems experienced by the Ukrainian society in general, and higher education in particular. Among them are:

  1. High level of corruption. According to the 2007 Corruption Perception Index (Transparency International) Ukraine ranks 122th out of 179 countries in its control of corruption.
  2. Lack of mechanisms for determining the level of skills of professionals. Such mechanisms are essential for evaluation of the economic potential of the country and necessary to access   the international labor market.
  3. The level of quality monitoring and assurance in higher education is very low. 

Authorities in Ukraine have undertaken a number of steps in order to overcome the existing problems:
  1.In 2005 the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine established the Ukrainian centre for evaluation of the quality of education together with 9 regional centers in order to introduce a system of external independent testing and monitor the quality of education. Since 2008 one can enter a higher educational establishment only on the basis of the certificates issued by the centers of external testing, instead of taking any entrance examinations.
  2.The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine in 2008 included the specialty “Educational Measurements” into the list of specialties in which teachers are being trained at the level of bachelor and also allowed to begin preparation of specialists in the field of educational measurements at the master's level. In addition, the Ministry has recommended the inclusion of the 2-credit course “Fundamentals of pedagogical measurement and monitoring the quality of education” into all teacher training curricula at the level of bachelor. Implementation of the system of external testing of university graduates is the aim for the following years. 

The realization of these steps is particularly difficult for Ukraine, because since the times of the Soviet Union, the national system of evaluating the quality of education and level of qualification of specialists is undeveloped and not effective. There is no system for licensing and certification of professional competence. Examinations on individual subjects are conducted mainly in oral form with evaluation based on subjective decisions of teachers. Attempts to use testing technologies without a deep understanding of their nature and the lack of necessary skills often leads to inaccurate results, ending in the formation of negative attitudes towards such technologies from teachers to test-takers to society as a whole, and even becomes a subject of political speculation.

Experiment conducted on the introduction of test technologies at Nizhyn University in 2007-2008, involved testing in a variety of subjects covering over 2000 senior students and found that the test results were often very different from those the teachers had expected. Both positive and negative differences were noticed between previous average results of students and the test results. The reason lies in the unacceptably low qualification of teachers as test developers and organizers. The university library consists of more than 1 300 000 books and periodicals, but none of them is devoted to educational measurement. Similar situation is characteristic for other universities - consortium members from Ukraine.