In the 2014/2015 academic year, there were 63,172 international students studying in Ukraine. However, according to expert estimates, Ukrainian educational institutions have significantly greater potential to provide educational services and could accommodate approximately 500,000 international students. As for the countries of origin, the number of students increased the most from Nigeria (more than 10 times), Turkmenistan (3 times), Morocco (2 times), India (61.72%), Lebanon (26.56%), Turkey (35.27%), and Azerbaijan (21.82%). Other countries account for an average of up to 5% of the total number of foreign students studying in Ukraine. The number of students decreased from countries such as Iran (–76%), China (–63%), Pakistan, Russia, Syria, and Georgia (up to 50%). The largest shares among the countries from which students came to study at Ukrainian universities are held by Turkmenistan (23%), Azerbaijan (13%), and India (7%).
The decline in the number of international students during the 2014–2015 academic year was caused by the events in eastern Ukraine and the intense information war waged by Russia against Ukraine. Under these conditions, the flow of students from other countries—who had previously preferred Ukrainian universities—shifted toward Russia and Belarus, which also pursue fairly active policies to attract foreign students to their educational institutions. According to statistics, each international student spends approximately one-fifth of their total expenses in the host country on tuition and four-fifths on housing, food, entertainment, and other expenses. Financial contributions from international students to our country’s education sector amounted to over $170 million, while additional spending on housing, food, and entertainment totaled another $600 million.
It is worth noting that international students are attracted to Ukrainian education by the relatively low cost of tuition and living expenses, the strength of certain academic disciplines (our physics, mathematics, and chemistry programs are recognized worldwide), and the long-standing reputation of leading Ukrainian universities. Monitoring of student preferences indicates that business education, technical fields, engineering, and the natural sciences are most highly valued in the global education services market. However, in Ukraine, 25% of international students are pursuing medical degrees and 20% are studying technical sciences. The humanities and economics departments at Ukrainian universities are less popular among international students.
Along with a decline in demand from international students for educational services at Ukrainian universities, there has been an increase in demand among our compatriots for education abroad. The rate at which Ukrainian students have been going abroad has increased by an average of 41.44% over the past five years. The largest growth was observed in countries such as Poland (nearly 4.5 times), Canada, Italy, Spain, Austria, the United Kingdom, and Slovakia (1.5 to 2.5 times). At the same time, there has been a decrease in the outflow of Ukrainians to certain countries, such as the United States, Hungary, Sweden, Latvia, Moldova, and Belarus (ranging from 10 to 45%). Regarding the breakdown of the most popular countries where Ukrainians go to study, statistical data show that over the past five years, the leaders have been Poland (32%) and Germany (20%). All other countries have shared the number of Ukrainian higher education students roughly equally, ranging from 2 to 5%. The number of Ukrainian students studying exclusively in European countries has increased by one-third over the past five years.
Training foreign nationals as specialists at Ukrainian universities is a promising area of development for the country’s higher education system and a highly profitable form of educational activity. However, every higher education institution must understand its responsibility for training foreign professionals and, in its pursuit of profitability, must not lower academic standards or the quality of training, as this could lead to an irreversible loss of its reputation and image in the international market for educational services.
Given that the global market for educational services is highly lucrative and that, for a number of countries, revenue from this sector constitutes a significant component of GDP, increasing the volume of Ukrainian educational services exports at this stage of the national economy’s development is an extremely necessary and promising avenue for attracting additional financial resources to the education sector.
The main competitive advantages of Ukrainian universities should be the accessibility of education, a wide range of educational services, a strong intellectual resource, and high scientific and pedagogical potential. In order to intensify the export activities of Ukrainian universities, it is necessary to resolve a number of issues related, primarily with the existence of a complex system for initially inviting foreign students to study, the underdevelopment of a network of overseas recreational centers for Ukrainian universities, the need to modernize the infrastructure of higher education institutions, the low quality of education, the insufficient use of advanced distance learning technologies, and the need to improve the legislative framework governing distance learning as an export commodity.
Based on a research article published in the journal “Global and National Economic Problems” (author: G.M. Puri, Ph.D. in Economics, Associate Professor of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Economics at the Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University of Drohobych)