Higher Attestation Commission
type of national government agency
Higher Attestation Commission (Russian: Высшая аттестационная комиссия, Ukrainian: Вища атестаційна комісія, abbreviated Cyrillic: ВАК, Latin: VAK) is a name of a national government agency in Russia, Ukraine and some other post-Soviet states that oversees awarding of advanced academic degrees. Due to translation differences, these committees are sometimes translated as the "State Supreme Certification Commission" or other similar variation; the common Cyrillic-based acronym of VAK remains a constant with all versions.
A commission of a similar kind (Bulgarian: Висша атестационна комисия) operated in Bulgaria until 2010, when it was abolished as part of a reorganisation of academic structures.
On December 9, 2010, the Higher Education Commission of Ukraine was merged into the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.
Russia and the former Soviet Union
During the Soviet Union, the Higher Attestation Commission under the USSR Council of Ministers (also abbreviated as VAK) oversaw and controlled the awarding of advanced academic degrees and academic ranks in all of the USSR. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, separate Higher Attestation Commissions arose in the newly independent nations. For example, the Russian agency is operating under the same name and is subordinated to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, taking similar duties in the Russian Federation.
The responsibilities of the Russian Commission include:
coordinating Dissertation Councils in Russian universities and research institutes;
promulgating regulations concerning awarding of academic degrees;
awarding the degrees of Candidate of Sciences and Doctor of Sciences, upon the recommendation of the Dissertation Council in the university or research institute where the defense of the dissertation took place;
awarding the academic rank of Professor;
making decisions on equivalence of foreign degrees awarded to Russian citizens.
Since 2016-2019, some (29, as of June 2020) top-level educational and scientific establishments in Russia, e.g. Moscow State University, were granted the right to award degrees independently, i.e. without a control, of the VAK; there are voices against extension of this option.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1976952. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2016, 2019 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Higher Attestation Commission” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.