7 months ago
In 2016 public spending on universities overseen by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine will cater for 245,000 students, including approximately 217,000 having places for full-time study. This was stated by Liliya Hrynevych, Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, at a press conference on the topic - Details of the 2016 University Admissions Process.
Overall, public spending has increased this year by 12.3%. The increase is primarily down to the costs of technological and agricultural specialisations, as well as the higher educational establishments that are overseen by the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Health. Liliya Hrynevych said that the growth in demand for military and medical personnel was due to an unavoidable reason - military conflict in Ukraine.
In consequence, however, public spending on universities administered by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, was reduced by 6% compared to last year. This reduction was primarily caused by a decrease in the number of students. Thus, according to data from the National Statistics Service (in Ukrainian), the number of school-leavers who received a certificate of secondary education in 2016 - excluding the occupied and uncontrolled territories - decreased by approximately 7% (18 thousand people).
"So the situation has now arisen that approximately 50% of school leavers will be able to obtain a place in higher education with a grant. This is good news for our students, as before them is now only a normal competitive context for access to higher education, and for us, the most important thing is that this competition is fair", said Liliya Hrynevych.
The Minister of Education described the development of high-tech business in Ukraine, which requires increasing public spending on technology disciplines, especially IT.
"Today we are working for growth, because those professionals who enter university this year, will come on to the labour market in 5-6 years. This means that if we choose innovative development of our economy now, and ourselves identify priority areas - clusters of the economy that will drive Ukraine forwards - we need to train professionals today for these clusters", said Liliya Hrynevych.
In addition, she said that one of the fundamental tasks before the Ministry in the reform of higher education is to change the quality of professional training.
"High-tech business in today’s Ukraine says that it lacks professionals with adequate training. The fact is that there has been sole focus on technical education, but business needs its employees to know a foreign language as well, given that they need to be able to work with people. That is one of a whole range of additional requirements for graduates. We are working on new standards of higher education that take this into account", said Liliya Hrynevych.
She also highlighted a number of aspects relating to the fact that this year a number of innovations was introduced that will help make university entrance processes more fair and more transparent.
These are in particular centred on the introduction of a fully electronic applications system that will not only remove queues at admissions centres, but also provides targetted public spending on technology - another innovation this year. So, now the number of places available under public spending at universities can be adjusted depending on popularity among students with higher EIT scores.
Note:
A Government meeting on 6 July adopted a wordy resolution "Public spending on professional training, scientific, educational and teaching staff, and staff train in 2016", which defined the scope of Budget allocation for 2016 for higher educational establishments. This includes the education of 67,500 “Junior Specialists”, 90,700 Bachelors, 42,900 “Specialist’s” degrees and 60,000 Masters. The number of postgraduate and doctoral students 2016 receiving funding is 4,600 with 493 receiving grants. 11,600 students will obtain professional further education.