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Ukraine
The problem of growing disproportion between higher education and employment was raised at the beginning of 90th by major international organizations including UNESCO (UNESCO, 1995), OECD (OECD, 1992; OECD, 1993) and World Bank (World Bank, 1994). All these publications point out the changing nature of economy with negligible response of higher education to new challenges. Teichler (Teichler, 1999) generalizing finding of various experts points out the following expectations from higher education:
· fair access according to socio-biographic background;
· structural diversification;
· greater attention to generic competencies, social skills and personality development;
· functional reshaping in the move towards a society of lifelong learning;
· preparation of students for the growing economic and societal globalization and internationalization;
· serving students in their preparation for their future roles through an increasing variety of means beyond classroom teaching and learning;
· establishment of regular modes of communication between higher education and the world of work.
Indeed, limited[1] but still available to recover recent data on HE can be of a proud to any Minister of Education of any country. Total number of students entering universities grew up almost 60% between 1990-2006. Presently Ukraine has 920 universities (all levels of accreditation) and the number of universities of the highest 3rd and 4th levels more then doubled reaching 350 in 2006.
Figure 1. Number of students entering HE, thousands. Source: Derzkomstat (www.ukrstat.gov.ua)
Graduation rate approached 84% in 2006 for universities of all accreditation levels[2] (average graduation rate of OECD countries is 36.4 in 2005 (OECD, 2007)). At the same time, number of PhD students possessing the degree of Candidate of Sciences increased 2.5 times the 1990 level with the average estimated graduation rate as low as 17% (estimates for USA vary between 30% to 70% with point estimate of 50% (Lovitts, 2001; Herzig, 2002; Nerad and Miller, 1996).
Figure 2. Number of PhD students possessing Candidate or Doctoral degree, thousands. Source: Derzkomstat (www.ukrstat.gov.ua)
While seen such magnificent ‘progress in quantification’ of Ukrainian HE and understanding the circumstances of such development when financing of HE drastically decreased increasing brain drain and search for second and third job among those academics that remain in Ukraine, one understand that such ‘window dressing’ necessitates decrease in quality of education. Using various sources of data we tried to estimate performance of graduates on labour market. The results shown in Table 1 indicate that about every third graduates was not able to find job in 2006! Taking into account that the majority of demand for labour force is in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, trade and repair[3] (i.e. graduates of technical colleges) we can conclude that the unemployment rate of university graduates is even higher[4].
Martin Godfrey (Godfrey, 2003) distinguishes several sources of failure in getting job by youth:
i) labor market failure (due to inaccurate information about the types of work available and returns to labor);
ii) credit market failure (higher lending rates for the young and the poor to start a business);
iii) location-related market failure (problems associated with depressed location makes it difficult to borrow to start a business or to search for and travel to work); and
iv) training systems failure (job-seekers do not know which are the most profitable skills to acquire, and, even if they did, could not find enough money to finance their acquisition or could not find anyone who can offer such training).
Table 1. Unemployment of graduates of secondary and higher education institutions. Source: Derzkomstat, author’s calculations.
Training system failure
The educational system Ukraine has inherited from the Soviet Union was represented, from the supply side, exclusively by state-owned institutions. The system while been successful within Soviet planned economy failed to properly respond to challenges of its new realty – market economy.
“ECA education systems that were a good fit with planned economies and authoritarian political systems are a poor fit with market economies and open political systems. International evidence shows that they are not creating the best product for a market economy. Market economies—and open societies—require abilities to apply knowledge flexibly, to cope with the cognitive requirements of unfamiliar tasks, to recognize and solve problems, and to self-manage new learning. The content and structures of curricula and textbooks and prevailing teaching practices in ECA do not seem to support the acquisition of these skills.”(Berryman, 2000)
And, indeed, Ministry of Education agreed with this. Its communiqué from the end of 2004 states:
“At present, we still experience difficulties with employment of university graduates all over Ukraine. A number of negative tendencies show evidences of growing disproportion between educational services and labour market.”
Ukraine’s HE faces unpreparedness to new realms on all its levels:
(i) Ministry of Education, on the one hand, lacks qualified personnel and quality data to be able to effectively manage the growing number of educational institutions, on the other hand, it does not encourage decentralization of HE management.
(ii) Ukraine still has a state standard for every specialty taught. According to state standard 67% of courses are prescribed by the Ministry, 23% are prescribed by home university and only 10% of courses are optional and can by chosen by student from a (very short) list[7]. The required curriculum is overloaded with a number of courses irrelevant to the field of study. Average bachelor degree program consists of 8 – 10 different courses per semester that breaks up students’ attention and does not allow to concentrate on what student actually needs. About a half (91 out of 172 credits) of academic load is devoted to theoretical study and practical training in the field of specialization, the rest is devoted to general socio-humanitarian and science disciplines. Student’s in-class weekly load is 26 hours that is much more then in typical western university.
(iii) University management system structurally remain the same as it was designed in Soviet times for a particular purpose – to fulfill the plans of Ministry of Education with a given inputs. Nowadays, when other sources of financing are available and university by itself became a player on educational (international) market, new university structure and university management is a must.
(iv) Following Soviet tradition scientific work in Ukraine is separated from educational. A network of 173 Academy of Sciences research institutions with about 17 thousands scientists receives approx. 93% of total state funding for scientific research remaining only 7% of funding for about 95 thousand university teachers.
(v) A range of problems is related to the main stakeholder of higher education – students. Corrosion in the system of primary and secondary education as well as underdevelopment of labour market play important role in ability of students to face new challenges of market economy. The organizers of Ukrainian round of TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) conclude that while the general level of pupils’ knowledge is close to the average for all countries, pupils in Ukraine showed comparably pure results in solving nonstandard problems or those taken from real life (Liyashenko at al, 2005). Also, current labour market situation do not encourage students to perform better. Return to schooling is considerably lower in Ukraine compare not only to developed countries but also to similar countries as Russia.( Gorodnichenko, Sabirianova Peter, 2005)
[7] For so-called national universities the distribution is a bit different with more courses of discretion of a home university
Policy
With the conservatism of educational system and it slow reaction to reforms we need to think about both preventative policy interventions that will give sizable effect in mid- and long run; and curative interventions that will deal with the situation that already exists and have immediate effect.
University based job advisers and recruiting agency University should play active role in establishing employment-related services to their students. This may include professional counseling, sight visits, support for internships, training for job seeking as well as direct support in the job-search process (Teichler, 1994).
Improvement of data collection
Gathering relevant disaggregated up-to-date data on socio-economic, demographic and educational status of population is crucial for effective policy interventions. It is important to have both public and private player on this market[8].
Curriculum reform: what to teach
Source: Berryman, Sue E. 1997. Preparing for the Global Economy: Focus on Educational Quality. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Curriculum reform: how to teach
Several conclusions can be made form the existing literature on the subject on developing employability skills (Cotton, 1993; Gregson 1992; Stasz, et al. 1990):
1. Employability skills are best learned when they are included among instructional goals and explicitly taught where instructors assume the role of facilitators and coaches rather than lecturers and order givers, requiring students to take much of the responsibility for their own learning.
2. Teachers are most successful when they have considerable autonomy in establishing curriculum, classroom design, and instructional approach. Moreover, democratic instructional approaches are superior to indoctrinational approaches for imparting employability skills to students.
Implementation
Policy implementation is always a challenge. This is especially true in rather conservative educational community that within last 20 years experience dramatic swings in different aspects of it’s life and is skeptical now to any new idea. On our opinion, it is imperative to start a nation-wide discussion of the issues raised above. There should be a political will of central government to make educational reforms. First steps should include (independent) collection of relevant data, their deep analysis and reporting to public. It is widely agreed (Prytula and Umpleby, 2008) that Participatory Strategic Planning methods are particularly helpful in planning reforms in the post communist countries, which are going through a long-term process of changing their management practices.
· fair access according to socio-biographic background;
· structural diversification;
· greater attention to generic competencies, social skills and personality development;
· functional reshaping in the move towards a society of lifelong learning;
· preparation of students for the growing economic and societal globalization and internationalization;
· serving students in their preparation for their future roles through an increasing variety of means beyond classroom teaching and learning;
· establishment of regular modes of communication between higher education and the world of work.
Higher Education in Ukraine: quantity without quality
For many outsiders Ukrainian HE might look like an extremely successful development.Indeed, limited[1] but still available to recover recent data on HE can be of a proud to any Minister of Education of any country. Total number of students entering universities grew up almost 60% between 1990-2006. Presently Ukraine has 920 universities (all levels of accreditation) and the number of universities of the highest 3rd and 4th levels more then doubled reaching 350 in 2006.
[1] “Ukraine is flagrant in maintaining the secrecy of data on the sector...” in World Bank report “Hidden Challenges to Education Systems in Transition Economies”
Figure 1. Number of students entering HE, thousands. Source: Derzkomstat (www.ukrstat.gov.ua)
Graduation rate approached 84% in 2006 for universities of all accreditation levels[2] (average graduation rate of OECD countries is 36.4 in 2005 (OECD, 2007)). At the same time, number of PhD students possessing the degree of Candidate of Sciences increased 2.5 times the 1990 level with the average estimated graduation rate as low as 17% (estimates for USA vary between 30% to 70% with point estimate of 50% (Lovitts, 2001; Herzig, 2002; Nerad and Miller, 1996).
[2] Data from State Statistics Committee of Ukraine (Derzkomstat) indicate more then 100% graduation rates for universities of 3rd and 4th level of accreditation in 1998 – 2003. On author’s opinion, this is due to double calculation of those studying for two degrees simultaneously. Starting 2004 Derzkomstat indicates improvement of statistics on graduates, and, indeed, starting from 2004 the graduation rate is below 100%, however remaining of unbelievably high level of 98.8% for years 2005 and 2006. The graduation rates for universities of 1st and 2nd level of accreditation for years 2005 and 2006 are 71% and 68%, correspondingly.
Figure 2. Number of PhD students possessing Candidate or Doctoral degree, thousands. Source: Derzkomstat (www.ukrstat.gov.ua)
While seen such magnificent ‘progress in quantification’ of Ukrainian HE and understanding the circumstances of such development when financing of HE drastically decreased increasing brain drain and search for second and third job among those academics that remain in Ukraine, one understand that such ‘window dressing’ necessitates decrease in quality of education. Using various sources of data we tried to estimate performance of graduates on labour market. The results shown in Table 1 indicate that about every third graduates was not able to find job in 2006! Taking into account that the majority of demand for labour force is in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, trade and repair[3] (i.e. graduates of technical colleges) we can conclude that the unemployment rate of university graduates is even higher[4].
Martin Godfrey (Godfrey, 2003) distinguishes several sources of failure in getting job by youth:
i) labor market failure (due to inaccurate information about the types of work available and returns to labor);
ii) credit market failure (higher lending rates for the young and the poor to start a business);
iii) location-related market failure (problems associated with depressed location makes it difficult to borrow to start a business or to search for and travel to work); and
iv) training systems failure (job-seekers do not know which are the most profitable skills to acquire, and, even if they did, could not find enough money to finance their acquisition or could not find anyone who can offer such training).
[3] See Derzkomstat data on Demand of enterprises for employees, by type of economic activity, www.ukrstat.gov.ua
[4] It is worth to mention that our calculations do not account for those who find employment abroad. Estimate of a number of economic migrants from Ukraine lies between 2 to 7 million people.
| 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | |
| Population, thousands | 49429.8 | 48923.2 | 48457.1 | 48003.5 | 47622.4 | 47280.8 | 46929.5 |
| Unemployed, thousands | 2707.60 | 2516.90 | 2301.00 | 2059.50 | 1906.00 | 1600.80 | 1515.00 |
| Unemployed graduates of secondary & higher education institutions, % of total unemployed[5] | 18.30% | 17.50% | 16.30% | 15.20% | 18.00% | 16.30% | 17.00% |
| Unemployed graduates of secondary & higher education institutions, thousands | 495.49 | 440.46 | 375.06 | 313.04 | 343.08 | 260.93 | 257.55 |
| Graduates of secondary & higher education institutions, thousands[6] | 665.71 | 714.84 | 769.31 | 827.89 | 719.39 | 771.83 | 809.51 |
| Unemployed graduates of secondary & higher education institutions, % | 74.43% | 61.62% | 48.75% | 37.81% | 47.69% | 33.81% | 31.82% |
[5] Based on annual household surveys.
[6] Calculated as sum of graduates of technical colleges and universities of all accreditation levels minus 1/3 of postgraduate students of a given year (in Ukraine postgraduate studies last three years).
Training system failure
The educational system Ukraine has inherited from the Soviet Union was represented, from the supply side, exclusively by state-owned institutions. The system while been successful within Soviet planned economy failed to properly respond to challenges of its new realty – market economy.
“ECA education systems that were a good fit with planned economies and authoritarian political systems are a poor fit with market economies and open political systems. International evidence shows that they are not creating the best product for a market economy. Market economies—and open societies—require abilities to apply knowledge flexibly, to cope with the cognitive requirements of unfamiliar tasks, to recognize and solve problems, and to self-manage new learning. The content and structures of curricula and textbooks and prevailing teaching practices in ECA do not seem to support the acquisition of these skills.”(Berryman, 2000)
And, indeed, Ministry of Education agreed with this. Its communiqué from the end of 2004 states:
“At present, we still experience difficulties with employment of university graduates all over Ukraine. A number of negative tendencies show evidences of growing disproportion between educational services and labour market.”
Ukraine’s HE faces unpreparedness to new realms on all its levels:
(i) Ministry of Education, on the one hand, lacks qualified personnel and quality data to be able to effectively manage the growing number of educational institutions, on the other hand, it does not encourage decentralization of HE management.
(ii) Ukraine still has a state standard for every specialty taught. According to state standard 67% of courses are prescribed by the Ministry, 23% are prescribed by home university and only 10% of courses are optional and can by chosen by student from a (very short) list[7]. The required curriculum is overloaded with a number of courses irrelevant to the field of study. Average bachelor degree program consists of 8 – 10 different courses per semester that breaks up students’ attention and does not allow to concentrate on what student actually needs. About a half (91 out of 172 credits) of academic load is devoted to theoretical study and practical training in the field of specialization, the rest is devoted to general socio-humanitarian and science disciplines. Student’s in-class weekly load is 26 hours that is much more then in typical western university.
(iii) University management system structurally remain the same as it was designed in Soviet times for a particular purpose – to fulfill the plans of Ministry of Education with a given inputs. Nowadays, when other sources of financing are available and university by itself became a player on educational (international) market, new university structure and university management is a must.
(iv) Following Soviet tradition scientific work in Ukraine is separated from educational. A network of 173 Academy of Sciences research institutions with about 17 thousands scientists receives approx. 93% of total state funding for scientific research remaining only 7% of funding for about 95 thousand university teachers.
(v) A range of problems is related to the main stakeholder of higher education – students. Corrosion in the system of primary and secondary education as well as underdevelopment of labour market play important role in ability of students to face new challenges of market economy. The organizers of Ukrainian round of TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) conclude that while the general level of pupils’ knowledge is close to the average for all countries, pupils in Ukraine showed comparably pure results in solving nonstandard problems or those taken from real life (Liyashenko at al, 2005). Also, current labour market situation do not encourage students to perform better. Return to schooling is considerably lower in Ukraine compare not only to developed countries but also to similar countries as Russia.( Gorodnichenko, Sabirianova Peter, 2005)
[7] For so-called national universities the distribution is a bit different with more courses of discretion of a home university
Policy
With the conservatism of educational system and it slow reaction to reforms we need to think about both preventative policy interventions that will give sizable effect in mid- and long run; and curative interventions that will deal with the situation that already exists and have immediate effect.
Curative policies
Skill training It is proved that employability skills are amenable to being taught. (Buck and Barrick, 1987). see also Gregson 1992; Stasz, et al. 1990). Special courses focused on developing high-order and affective skills should be offered on for-credit basis. Small business start-up developmentUniversity based job advisers and recruiting agency University should play active role in establishing employment-related services to their students. This may include professional counseling, sight visits, support for internships, training for job seeking as well as direct support in the job-search process (Teichler, 1994).
Preventative policies
Decentralization Certain steps toward academic and administrative decentralization should be made in order to increase efficiency of the system. It is important not to speed up this process but gain understanding and support of all stakeholders. In the case of Ukraine, the first step in decentralization might be reform of state standards and reduction of the number of specialties making higher education more interdisciplinary. For this purpose eight universities have formed a Consortium of universities for autonomy.Improvement of data collection
Gathering relevant disaggregated up-to-date data on socio-economic, demographic and educational status of population is crucial for effective policy interventions. It is important to have both public and private player on this market[8].
[8] Systematic Research Inc. (http://www.systemic.com) is an excellent example of private educational research institution.
Curriculum reform: what to teach
Source: Berryman, Sue E. 1997. Preparing for the Global Economy: Focus on Educational Quality. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Curriculum reform: how to teach
Several conclusions can be made form the existing literature on the subject on developing employability skills (Cotton, 1993; Gregson 1992; Stasz, et al. 1990):
1. Employability skills are best learned when they are included among instructional goals and explicitly taught where instructors assume the role of facilitators and coaches rather than lecturers and order givers, requiring students to take much of the responsibility for their own learning.
2. Teachers are most successful when they have considerable autonomy in establishing curriculum, classroom design, and instructional approach. Moreover, democratic instructional approaches are superior to indoctrinational approaches for imparting employability skills to students.
University management reform
Implementation
Policy implementation is always a challenge. This is especially true in rather conservative educational community that within last 20 years experience dramatic swings in different aspects of it’s life and is skeptical now to any new idea. On our opinion, it is imperative to start a nation-wide discussion of the issues raised above. There should be a political will of central government to make educational reforms. First steps should include (independent) collection of relevant data, their deep analysis and reporting to public. It is widely agreed (Prytula and Umpleby, 2008) that Participatory Strategic Planning methods are particularly helpful in planning reforms in the post communist countries, which are going through a long-term process of changing their management practices.
Reference
UNESCO (1995). Policy paper for change and development in higher education. Paris: UNESCO.
OECD (1992). From higher education to employment. Paris: OECD 4 vols.
OECD (1993). From higher education to employment: Synthesis report. Paris: OECD.
OECD (2007). Education at Glance 2007. OECD Indicators. Paris: OECD.
World Bank (1994). Higher education: the lessons of experience. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Teichler, U., Higher education policy and the world of work: changing conditions and challenges, Higher Education Policy 12 (1999) 285±312.
Godfrey, Martin, 2003, Youth Employment Policy in Developing and Transition Countries – Prevention as well as Cure, Social Protection Discussion Paper Series No. 0320, Washington D.C., World Bank.
Berryman, Sue, 2000, Hidden Challenges to Education Systems in Transition Economies, Washington D.C., World Bank.
Liyashenko,O. at al, “Report on quality monitoring of fourteen age pupil knowledge in mathematics and sciences”, Centre for testing technologies, Kyiv, 2005.
Gorodnichenko, Yu., Sabirianova Peter, K., “Returns to schooling in Russia and Ukraine: A semiparametric approach to cross-country comparative analysis”, Journal of Comparative Economics 33 (2005) 324–350
Gregson, J. A. "Effective Pedagogical Strategies for Work Attitudes Instruction." Journal of Industrial Teacher Education 29/3 (1992): 60-79.
Stasz, C.; McArthur, D.; Lewis, M.; and Ramsey, K. Teaching and Learning Generic Skill for the Workplace. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1990.
Buck, L. L., and Barrick, R. K. "They're Trained, But Are They Employable?" Vocational Education Journal 62/5 (1987): 29-31
Cotton, K., Developing Employability Skills, School Improvement Research Series, NWREL, 1993 (available at http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/8/c015.html)
Prytula, Y., Umpleby, S., 2008. Improving the Performance of Universities in Transitional Economies. In Robert Trappl (ed.) Cybernetics and Systems ’08, Proceedings of the European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research.
Lovitts, B. E. 2001. Leaving the Ivory Tower: The Causes and Consequences of Departure from Doctoral Study. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Herzig, A. H. 2002. Where Have All the Students Gone? Participation of Doctoral Students in Authentic Mathematical Activity as a Necessary Condition for Persistence Toward the Ph.D. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 50: 177-212.
Nerad, M. and D.S. Miller. 1996. Increasing Student Retention in Graduate and Professional Programs. New Directions for Institutional Research, 92: 61-76.
OECD (1992). From higher education to employment. Paris: OECD 4 vols.
OECD (1993). From higher education to employment: Synthesis report. Paris: OECD.
OECD (2007). Education at Glance 2007. OECD Indicators. Paris: OECD.
World Bank (1994). Higher education: the lessons of experience. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Teichler, U., Higher education policy and the world of work: changing conditions and challenges, Higher Education Policy 12 (1999) 285±312.
Godfrey, Martin, 2003, Youth Employment Policy in Developing and Transition Countries – Prevention as well as Cure, Social Protection Discussion Paper Series No. 0320, Washington D.C., World Bank.
Berryman, Sue, 2000, Hidden Challenges to Education Systems in Transition Economies, Washington D.C., World Bank.
Liyashenko,O. at al, “Report on quality monitoring of fourteen age pupil knowledge in mathematics and sciences”, Centre for testing technologies, Kyiv, 2005.
Gorodnichenko, Yu., Sabirianova Peter, K., “Returns to schooling in Russia and Ukraine: A semiparametric approach to cross-country comparative analysis”, Journal of Comparative Economics 33 (2005) 324–350
Gregson, J. A. "Effective Pedagogical Strategies for Work Attitudes Instruction." Journal of Industrial Teacher Education 29/3 (1992): 60-79.
Stasz, C.; McArthur, D.; Lewis, M.; and Ramsey, K. Teaching and Learning Generic Skill for the Workplace. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1990.
Buck, L. L., and Barrick, R. K. "They're Trained, But Are They Employable?" Vocational Education Journal 62/5 (1987): 29-31
Cotton, K., Developing Employability Skills, School Improvement Research Series, NWREL, 1993 (available at http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/8/c015.html)
Prytula, Y., Umpleby, S., 2008. Improving the Performance of Universities in Transitional Economies. In Robert Trappl (ed.) Cybernetics and Systems ’08, Proceedings of the European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research.
Lovitts, B. E. 2001. Leaving the Ivory Tower: The Causes and Consequences of Departure from Doctoral Study. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Herzig, A. H. 2002. Where Have All the Students Gone? Participation of Doctoral Students in Authentic Mathematical Activity as a Necessary Condition for Persistence Toward the Ph.D. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 50: 177-212.
Nerad, M. and D.S. Miller. 1996. Increasing Student Retention in Graduate and Professional Programs. New Directions for Institutional Research, 92: 61-76.
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