Charges for education at many higher educational establishments of Ukraine will be reduced, Education, Science, Youth and Sports Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk has said.
"I believe that prices for education at the ten most popular higher educational establishments of the country will remain the same, [but] will decrease at many others," the minister said in an interview with the Segodnia newspaper published on Saturday.
With regard to possible rises in prices for education, Tabachnyk said: "We do not encourage higher education establishments to raise prices. But I would advice the rectors of leading universities to raise prices for education only for the most popular specialties like international economics and international law. These specialties maintain the whole university, and demand for them does not fall. As there are 20-25 applicants per place [for these specialties]."
Tabachnyk also commented on the situation with state quotas at higher educational establishments.
"…Our proposal is [to cut state quotas] by 10-15%. But I would put it another way: while last year state quotas reached a maximum level of 39.1% of the number of graduating students, then this year it will exceed well over 40%."
At the same time Tabachnyk said that state quotas would be cut by 10-15% for specialties that are "redundant on the labor market."
"These are mainly lawyers and economists. During the Soviet times five higher educational establishments educated these specialties. At present, due to peace-loving characters of all previous [education] ministers, 163 higher education establishment have licenses [to teach these subjects]," Tabachnyk said.
