Natalia Volodymyrivna Avramenko
Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor
Trends in the International Education Market and the Current State of Higher Education Service Exports in Ukraine
An Overview of the Enrollment of International Students in Educational Programs Offered by Ukrainian Higher Education Institutions.
Ukrainian higher education institutions have sufficient potential to compete for a share of the educational services market. According to data from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, 65,000 students from 146 countries around the world are studying at 187 higher education institutions in Ukraine. Ukraine’s share of the international education market, measured by the number of international students, stands at 1.5%. In recent years, the number of international students has increased significantly. Financial revenues from these students in the 2012–2013 academic year totaled 4.3 billion hryvnias. Higher education institutions with a significant proportion of international students receive substantial funding. For example, in the 2012–13 academic year, Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics received 40% of its budget from international students enrolled on a fee-paying basis.
Providing educational services to foreign citizens during the 2012/2013 academic year created jobs for 5,000 teachers. Foreign students are drawn to the Ukrainian education system by the relatively low cost of tuition and living expenses, the depth of certain academic disciplines (our physics-mathematics and chemistry programs are recognized worldwide) and the long-standing reputation of leading Ukrainian universities. To adequately assess the competitive advantages or disadvantages of Ukrainian education, it is necessary, first and foremost, to analyze the demands of the global market. Monitoring of student preferences shows that business education is valued most highly on the international market. Nearly 20% of students study technical and engineering sciences, with information technology being the most popular field. Roughly the same number of students choose the natural sciences. Medicine brings up the rear at 4–5%.
In Ukraine, however, 25% (more than 16,000) of foreign students are studying medicine. And 20% (more than 13,000) are studying technical sciences. The humanities and economics departments at Ukrainian universities are less popular among international students. When considering the geographic origin of applicants, the largest percentage of students in Ukraine come from Asia: Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, China, the Russian Federation, India, Iraq, Iran, and others. From the African continent, a significant number of students come from Nigeria. More than 4,000 international students come from European countries. The reason why few international students from developed countries come to study in Ukraine is the relatively low rankings of Ukrainian universities in international rankings, which determine the quality of education. In 2014, the number of foreign students decreased due to the events in Ukraine. For example, the number of first-year students admitted to Ivano-Frankivsk National Medical University was 20 times lower than in 2013.
In the future, we need to step up our outreach efforts abroad to convince prospective students that studying in Ukraine is safe. For Ukrainian higher education, expanding the export of educational services is beneficial, first, from an economic standpoint: training specialists for foreign countries is becoming one of the most profitable sources of revenue, especially given the lack of funding in the education sector. Second, from the perspective of improving the quality of education: the desire to attract international students encourages Ukrainian universities to develop a system for training specialists that takes into account the global labor market’s requirements regarding the quality of education and the fields of study.