You're reading: Poor university choices lead to career woes in Ukraine

Heading to university at the ages of 17 or even 16, Ukrainians often try to earn diplomas that are irrelevant to their professional careers. To make up for this they then have to enroll in a second, much costlier degree. Yet endemic corruption and a poor level of education mean that even a well-picked diploma can be of little help.

At present, many young Ukrainians go to universities to get any diploma, basing their choice not on personal skills or prospects, but rather availability at popular institutions. Experts say this trend is encouraged by poor preparation at schools, where teachers fail to explain the value of studying or fail to conduct professionally oriented classes. Sometimes classmates don’t help.

“Many future students don’t understand the essential elements of their profession,” said Artem Onkovych, lecturer at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. “Parents and friends greatly influence young people and push them to make wrong professional decisions.”

Egor Stadnyi, an expert at the Society Research Centre, believes students should carefully study the ratings of universities and needs of the labor market before enrolling. But Ukraine’s universities often lack their own freedom to change curricula, due to Education Ministry bureaucracy. “It would be better for each university to approve its own syllabus,” he said.

According to a July  employee survey by human resources database Headhunters.ua, 30 percent of Ukrainians feel they need a second degree to help their careers.

One of them is Inna Babych who graduated from the Taras Shevchenko university’s Institute of Journalism last year and is now applying to the Vadym Hetman National Economic University.

“I want to get a second university degree in stock market development. A two-year course will cost Hr 20, 000 ($2,500),” Babych explained. “I need to improve my work skills. Also, from 2013, those who only have a bachelor’s degree cannot possess civil service jobs.”

HeadHunter.ua also found that just 51.2 percent of graduates work in a field related to their educational background. Many are under-employed, working below their qualifications.

This problem is not unique to Ukraine, though, and affects almost three quarters of Americans above the age of 20, according to a 2011 study by the U.S. Employment Policy Research Network.

More than a third of Ukrainians are working at a job that doesn’t match their qualifications, said Natalia Matsipura, spokesperson for Headhunter.ua. Interestingly, she noted, only 37.8 percent of Ukrainians were asked to show their diploma during their job interview. “Ukrainian employers value experience and professional skills more than diploma even if the person received higher education abroad,” Matsipura said.

According to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, the government spent Hr 17 billion (just over $2 billion) from the budget on higher education in 2010/2011. It’s about 6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, a level comparable to much better performing Scandinavian countries, according to Kyiv-based think tank Democratic Initiatives Foundation.

A study by the International Foundation for Education Policy shows that about Hr 22,700 per student is needed from the state budget to cover education expenses and that 41,473 students received government aid for second-cycle (masters) programs last year.

The money is not well-spent and Ukrainian universities still lack solid reputations. Not a single Ukrainian institute has ever entered the Top 400 global ranking by the Times Higher Education, a British journal.

Ukraine offers limited numbers of tuition-free first degrees to students who have high scores on independent external tests. Yet this depends on the quota allotted to the university from the state budget. Tuition for second degrees has to be covered by students. In 2011, however, the Education Ministry decided state aid could be allotted for health reasons or if a student loses the ability to perform professional or official duties according to previous qualifications, if confirmed by a medical certificate.

This opens the process up to abuse. Pavlo Polyanskyi, head of the non-governmental organization Educational Monitoring Center and former deputy education minister, said it’s easy for a person to buy a bogus medical certificate to qualify for state assistance.”But it’s very difficult to figure out the number of violations during the process of enrolling, because we know about it only through appeals to our center or directly to the universities.”

Polyanskyi said the state should more clearly specify the terms under which a person can get state assistance. He says the ministry where he used to work has lost touch. “They didn’t take into consideration any of our proposals,” he said. Meanwhile, opposition leaders Arseniy Yatseniuk and Olesia Orobets have vowed to more tightly regulate the process.

The cost of a post-graduate course in Ukraine starts from Hr 4,000 and can go up to Hr 25,000 per year. For most Ukrainians, this is too expensive, so many students just give up – or try various ways to cheat or bribe their way in.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected]