Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>A full-scale war might be expected to tear apart the scientific fabric of Ukrainian higher education. This study tests that expectation through measurement, applying network diagnostics to the country’s forty largest universities. Using OpenAlex data, a collaboration network is reconstructed for two windows — pre-war (2019–2021) and wartime (2023–2025); its internal and European contours are compared, and the configuration of human-capital reproduction is measured through state-commissioned enrolment (UEDEBO) and student-body statistics (State Statistics Service). The result contradicts the expectation of collapse: internal connectivity rose by 44 per cent in the weight of joint publications and the European contour by 45 per cent, at a synchronous pace and in the same nodes; the typical university retained 88 per cent of its pre-war partnerships. A Node Resilience Index is proposed; its median of 1.54 means the typical node became half as connected again as before the war. Resilience proved to be a property of network position rather than regional wealth, and a function of the capacity to reconfigure rather than pre-war diversification. The configuration of training shifted toward reconstruction-relevant and infrastructural fields. Under shock, the university emerges not as a casualty but as a node that thickens the ties around it.</p>