Almost former chairman of the National Assembly Arthur Baghdasaryan, who has declared himself oppositional, is doing business in the education sector along with his other businesses.
Baghdasaryan owns the European Territorial Academy and the French University. These two institutions were founded after 2000 and are pretty well-known among the other universities of Armenia with their quality. But we are not going to talk about the quality this time, but rather the buildings where students currently attend classes.
The French University and the European Territorial Academy make up four buildings in the Zeytun student settlement, the student library and former “Zeytun” movie theatre with the surrounding areas. The French University used to be a building located near the gym named after Vazgen Sargsyan (former “Dynamo” gym). But that building was small to be enlarged for any university, especially since Baghdasaryan intended on founding another institution-the European academy. Since the huge buildings in the heart of Yerevan were already privatized, Baghdasaryan used the student hostels in Zeytun for his universities. As a matter of fact, those buildings are located in a good part of the city, there are spacious yards and most importantly, we have the psychological factor: it won’t be hard to get the students in the heart of the city to come all the way to Zeytun due to the fact that there has always been a learning environment here. The representatives of the education sector know this and just a couple of years ago, they started to evict the students from the regions and abroad living in the hostel apartments. There were 150 rooms in each of those hostels and 2-3 students lived in each one of them. The hostels were affordable for the students from Armenia’s Marzes due to the cheap rent. Besides that, the entire environment was more preferable for the students. That student settlement had a large library and nobody knows what happened to that library. In a word, the overall environment was good. When the two abovementioned universities had to move to Zeytun, the student/residents didn’t welcome them with open arms. The reader may remember the protests/demonstrations, which didn’t solve anything. Former Minister of Education and Sciences Sergo Yeritsyan used to meet with students and assured them that the ministry would do everything it could to solve the problems at hand, but he wasn’t telling them to be desperate and leave, that he’s not going to do anything just because the owner of those universities is the leader of his party. Over time, these two universities partly seized the students’ territories.
A month ago, when Arthur Baghdasaryan strictly criticized the 2001-2003 privatization program at the National Assembly, a question came up: how did he purchase those territories? “168 Hours” asked former minister of education and sciences Sergo Yeritsyan, but the reply was rather late. He replied when it was already clear that the chairman of the National Assembly was going to resign and all that was left was the technical part for him to leave the party. In any case, the reply was rather interesting.
It turns out that the French University and the European Territorial Academy actually have funds and Arthur Baghdasaryan is the president of the board of trustees of those funds. Based on the order of the government, the four buildings located in the student settlement and the nearby areas have been handed over to the two funds “as property from the government”. The four buildings put together make up 14,257 square meters, while the nearby area makes up 24,958 square meters. Mr. Yeritsyan also informed us that “the funds are non-profit organizations and after they stop working, their property and territories will be handed over to the government as the property of the Republic of Armenia.”
According to our sources, there are 1500 students studying at both universities. The tuition is pretty high for both universities. The yearly tuition at the French University is 400,000 AMD (930 dollars) and 390,000 AMD (910 dollars) at the European Academy. Rector of the second university, S. Bichakhchyan, said that 20% of their students don’t pay tuition and that the academy has discounts. Based on some estimations, this year both universities have collected one million dollars worth in tuitions and they will collect more or less the same amount in the years to come. It’s obvious that they collected less during the previous years, after all, they were newly founded, but the French government provides financial aid to the French University. The expenses for remodeling the four buildings must have covered 1.5-1.8 million dollars. According to specialists, each square meter costs 100-120 dollars for remodeling that many buildings. They might have even made expenses for student items and of course, the university will pay less to its workers. But no matter how much we distribute the tuitions, we still feel that there is some profit. Perhaps it’s the fact that all the corporate universities founded after the declaration of Armenia’s independence have made sure they get some profit. The tuitions collected have satisfied them to purchase the entire building or construct a new one and get profit at the same time. So, how is it that the fund is barely making ends meet? Education is considered to be a stable and profitable business. It’s just that corporate universities get the profit out in the open, while funds hide that and go undercover.
In his response, S. Yeritsyan didn’t mention just when the hostel buildings were handed over to the two university funds. Was that during the last couple of years when A. Baghdasaryan was still chairman of the National Assembly and Yeritsyan was the minister of education and sciences, or before that, when both were doing all they could to come to power and getting the support of the government? In Armenian reality, there is a rule that the property belonging to the person out of the government is redistributed. Arthur Baghdasaryan has declared himself oppositional. Perhaps now they will think about getting back the government’s investments (hostels) back or even give them to the Dashnaks (federalists). After all, the Dashnaks are the ones with their eyes on the property belonging to Rule of Law, especially since the new minister of education and sciences is Dashnak Levon Mkrtchyan. The university administration is not worried over that, but we citizens are. The rules of the game in Armenian reality can be brutal. Perhaps they won’t do anything to A. Baghdasaryan’s business because there is an overall opinion that he is simply declaring that he’s oppositional. We’ll just wait and see.