The Second Ukrainian International Education Forum was held on March 26-27, 2019 in Kyiv.
The Forum was opened by the Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, Mrs. Lilia Hrynevych, who, in her speech, mentioned all the important aspects of teaching foreigners in Ukraine. The positive thing is that the number of international students increased by 10,000 compared with 2018, but students continue to jostle the injustice of an employment contractors, which leads to economic and image losses in Ukraine.
During her speech, Lilia Hrynevych, as well as a year ago, emphasized that the training of foreigners in Ukraine should be based on three principles: the transparency of the entry procedure, the safety of students while staying in Ukraine, and the quality of educational process itself.
During the Forum, the Minister also said that this autumn will be the first trial language exam. “This will be a pilot project in which not all the Institution of Higher Education will participate. But starting from 2020 language External independent evaluation will pass all international students after finishing first academic year of studying. This issue is covered by The Ukrainian Center for Education Quality Assessment (UCEQA),” said Lilia Hrynevych.
What about the international departments at universities, it was spoken about new licensing conditions that strengthened the requirements for educational institutions that train foreign citizens. “So, for admitting international students to study, the institution must necessarily have a structural office for working with foreign citizens, which functions, in particular, include the issuance of invitations to study and ensuring that such students are staying in Ukraine legally. It is also obligatory to have student accommodations in institutions of higher education, where international student can comfortable live,” – said Lilia Hrynevych in her speech.
The Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, Roman Greba spoke in his speech about the establishing of the StudyPass (student’s electronic cabinet). Student’s personal information is protected by modern Blockchain technology, which has been working since 2018. This innovation was very welcomed by Embassies of partner countries. Already, just on the site studyinukraine.gov.ua, the student has the opportunity to check the data of his invitation and learn information about the university, agent, Embassy and much more useful information.
During the forum there were a number of discussions and speeches on the topic of teaching international students in Ukraine, the normative and legal provision of higher education in Ukraine, discussed the problems and prospects of medical education in Ukraine.
Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Yuriy Rashkevich spoke about licensing requirements for the training of international students in Ukraine. “Under the current Licensing Terms, it is written that preparation of foreign students is licensed for each specialty separately. That means, if the higher education has a wide range of specialties and wants to study foreigners for each of them, it must prepare a package of documents for each direction. As a result, we have many complaints from educational institutions that they have to spend a lot of time and resources on the preparation of documents, the information that is often duplicated. Therefore, in the course of changes to the Licensing Terms, we offer institutions to obtain one, separate license for the training of foreign students. It should be issued only in accredited specialties “, – said Yuriy Rashkevich.
During the second day of the Forum a number of projects were presented, among them ERASMUS + academic mobility programs by Ivanna Atamanchuk, Conjoint international programs of the US Government and the opportunities of the internationalisation of education by Elizaveta Shchepetylnykova and Veronika Aleksanich, Taras Finikov presented united Ukrainian-Polish project “Innovation University and Leadership” .
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