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Businesses in Ukraine are investing more money in university classrooms, hoping to better prepare students and prospective recruits for the workplace and repair Ukraine’s ailing universities.

ling universities.

Problems in the halls of learning range from inadequate instruction to widespread bribe-taking by administrators, in exchange for admission, and by professors, in exchange for good grades.

Ukraine’s troubled education system is struggling to keep up with the country’s growing need for a qualified professional workforce.

As demand increases for professionals in Ukraine, partnerships between Ukrainian universities and businesses are forming in an attempt to modernize Ukraine’s post-secondary system and achieve higher Western standards.

While the exact amounts of the business community’s contributions are hard to quantify, several programs have been launched with the help of Ukraine’s richest businessmen. Those include billionaires Rinat Akhmetov and Victor Pinchuk, who acquired fortunes during the privatization of Soviet industrial assets following Ukraine’s independence 17 years ago.

Tuition rates are being subsidized by donations from large firms and internships are being developed to give students practical experience.

At the Kyiv School for Economics, created in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and the Economic Education and Research Consortium (EERC), students receive scholarships from some of the biggest companies and non-governmental organizations in Ukraine, helping them cover the annual tuition of 10,000 euro.

“Businesses see there are problems in preparing young professionals for the workplace and are ready to support projects that aim to improve students’ preparation for a professional career,” said Vira Balatska, head of the fundraising department at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, which has teamed up with local and international companies to raise money for their business program, one of the most prestigious in the country.

An example of the growing influence of business in Ukraine is Ernst & Young, an international audit and consulting firm with two offices in Ukraine, which created a scholarship for one student of the law faculty at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. In addition to creating an internship program that sees 12 student placements in the Ernst & Young Kyiv and Donetsk offices, the company has also donated money to an endowment fund that will be used to support an economics professor.

Anna Kozeletska, human resources manager at Ernst & Young, said their company introduced a “field testing” at Kyiv National Economic University and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

“We conduct tests for graduate candidates at universities. Those students who qualify do not have to pass additional tests at Ernst & Young; they proceed to the next level of selection, which are the interviews. This helps us select the brightest and the most promising students,” Kozeletska said.

Sophia Opatska, a director at Lviv Business School at the Ukrainian Catholic University, said international and domestic companies in Ukraine have internships for fourth and fifth year students in order to determine a person’s ability to study, their motivation for development and loyalty to the employer. “Companies clearly understand that when they hire a young employee they will have to invest a lot of time and effort in employee training, but they want to see a person who is interested in studying and professional development,” Opatska said.

Companies are interested in investing in education because of Ukraine’s outdated educational model that is based on the Soviet days, said Volodymyr Nikitin, director of the International Centre for Policy Studies that conducts research on Ukraine’s education system.

According to Nikitin, the emphasis on attaining a diploma is the main concern of students and they are willing to pay for it, he said. Students, he said, don’t care about knowledge retention, they just want the piece of paper.

“So long as this is the mentality, corruption in education will flourish,” Nikitin added.

But with the flood of foreign companies coming into Ukraine, firms are looking for qualified employees who have been trained in a Western educational approach, experts said.

Mychailo Wynnyckyj, a professor at Kyiv­Mohyla Business School, said “the most important thing that Western, international companies are looking for are people that are able to think independently. They are not looking for people who have factual knowledge. They are looking for people with communication, intellectual and analytical skills.”

Akhmetov, who with a fortune estimated at $31 billion is Ukraine’s richest businessman, started the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation for the Development of Ukraine. One innovative teaching program started by the foundation is the program called “Digital Future of Journalism,” in partnership with Kyiv­Mohyla School of Journalism. The program targets promising young journalists and is aimed at providing them with up­to­date knowledge and skills on digital technologies as a new platform for media.

“This year we have 20 students studying in the program free of charge,” said Svitlana Panushkina, manager of the project. “The Foundation spent about $550,000 for the first year of program. The planned budget for the next year is around $400,000.”

Three years ago, Victor Pinchuk’s Foundation started a special program called Zavtra.ua, a stipend program for gifted students.

“In the first year of the program we had 201 winners of scholarships, and there are 316 students this year,” said Iryna Gutsal, program administrator.

“Each student scholarship holder receives Hr 500 monthly during one year,” Gutsal said, mentioning they also plan to financially support individual initiatives of scholarship holders.

Despite efforts to modernize and improve higher education in Ukraine, most educational establishments are far from their Western counterparts.

Dariya Orlova can be reached at Orlova@kpmedia.ua or 496­4563 ext. 1105.