Quality of life in Ukraine 

Most expats’ quality of life in Ukraine remains high. However, for Ukrainians it is a world of sharp contrasts between the rich and the poor. Because the country is fairly affordable, expats tend to have a comfortable standard of living, travel and enjoy the many leisure options the country has to offer. While it is not the number-one spot for foreigners looking to work abroad, expat communities are big enough that you will never feel lonely or isolated. And, of course, Ukrainians have a reputation for being friendly.

Working in Ukraine 

Thinking about working in Ukraine? Check out the many career options to choose from. There are several non-profit organizations such as the United Nations, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Trade Organization. Private English-speaking schools and universities are becoming more and more popular in Ukraine and international teachers are always on demand. Other interesting sectors are IT, marketing, sales and communications. International organizations and large companies tend to pay a decent salary that will allow you to live comfortably.

CHALLENGES AND PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION

Several serious problems hinder Ukraine’s education sector. They include academic corruption, population loss, the lack of university autonomy, dated facilities, and armed conflict.

Academic Corruption

Even though rampant government corruption was one of the main causes of the Euromaidan Revolution, the level of and tolerance for corruption in Ukraine remains high, according to the anti-corruption watchdog organization Transparency International, which considers corruption a systemic problem in Ukraine, ranking the country 120th out of 180 countries on its 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index. Of the Ukrainians surveyed by Transparency International shortly after the Euromaidan Revolution, about one-third viewed bribery as an acceptable way of resolving problems with government agencies. Likewise, 44 percent of respondents in a 2017 survey by the I. Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Ukrainian Sociology Service believed that corruption had increased since 2014, while only 4 percent believed it had decreased. Forty-four percent of respondents thought corruption was the biggest problem in the country, while an additional 35 percent considered it one of the most serious problems. A sizable share of respondents—39 percent—were doubtful that it was possible to overcome corruption in Ukraine at all.  In 2015 the Guardian newspaper called Ukraine “the most corrupt nation in Europe.”

As in several other post-Communist countries, Ukraine’s education system is among the sectors most affected by corruption. Its manifestations range from bribery in admissions to examinations fraud, the misallocation of funds, extortion, ghost teachers, and dissertation plagiarism. While corruption is believed to be most rampant and quickly spreading in tertiary education, particularly in the competitive medical universities, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently detailed similarly endemic problems in the Ukrainian school system, from preschool to upper-secondary levels. The effects are a loss of educational quality, the “leakage” of critical resources, and low public trust in the system. Externally, corruption and quality problems affect the international reputation of Ukrainian education. Alarmed by frequent reports  of corruption in Ukrainian medical schools, Saudi Arabia, for example, no longer automatically recognizes Ukrainian medical degrees.

Demographic Decline and a Shrinking Education System  

Alongside other Eastern European nations, Ukraine has one of the fastest shrinking populations in the world. Measuring the size of Ukraine’s population is complicated because of the 2014 Russian annexation of the Crimea and the loss of control over the eastern Donbas region’s oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, but even before these developments the number of people in the country declined by 6.7 million between 1993 and 2013. Low birth rates, high mortality rates, large-scale outmigration, and other causes contributed to the decline. The UN projects that Ukraine’s population will decrease by another unprecedented 18 percent until 2050, from 44.2 million in 2017 to merely 36.4 million.

The effect on the education system has been huge. According to UNESCO statistics, the number of tertiary students in the country dropped from about 2.85 million in 2008 to 1.67 million in 2017—a decrease of more than 41 percent that has led to the closure of hundreds of higher education institutions (HEIs). The total number, including universities and other types of HEIs, declined from more than 1,000 in 1996 to 661 in the 2017/18 academic year, per government data. Given the current demographic trends, more closures are likely. In the school system, population decline and outmigration from villages and small cities recently caused the government to create community “hub schools” to pool resources and combine pupils from different schools.

Dated Curricula, Lack of University Autonomy, and Other Problems

Ukraine is among the most educated societies in the world with a tertiary gross enrollment ratio (GER) of 83 percent (2014, UNESCO). Yet, many view the country’s academic institutions as inflexible and out of touch with labor market demands and societal needs. In this view, Ukrainian society has an unhealthy obsession with theoretical university education at the expense of more employment-geared education and training. Youth unemployment is high (19.6 percent among 15- to 24-year-olds in 2018) and far above unemployment rates of the general working-age population.

Other problems stem from the legacy of the highly centralized, rigid system of the former Soviet Union. For example, Ukrainian universities generally lack autonomy and initiative. While there have been heightened attempts to increase flexibility, widen autonomy, internationalize education, and make curricula more employment-relevant in recent years, the implementation of the 2014 higher education law, which is designed to increase university autonomy, has thus far been sluggish. Prominent critics like Sergiy Kvit, Ukraine’s former education minister and current director of its National Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, have lamented that the reforms have failed to produce adequate changes, most notably in terms of financial autonomy of public universities. State universities remain dependent on the government in a variety of crucial areas, including salaries for university staff, funding of research, and infrastructure development.

External observers have noted that parts of the infrastructure at Ukrainian schools is inadequate and that teacher morale is low. Satu Kahkonen, the World Bank Country Director for Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine, noted in a recent article that “While visiting schools in Ukraine, especially village schools, it is hard to believe that the state spends 6 percent of GDP on education—one of the highest rates of public spending on education in the world. Ukrainian schools often lack adequate facilities, modern equipment or quality textbooks.” One of the problems, according to Kahkonen, is that the number of students has declined much faster than the number of schools and teachers. As a result, Ukraine has very low student-to-teacher ratios but a system that is very expensive to maintain and ultimately unsustainable.

Overall, the international competitiveness of Ukraine’s education system appears to have declined in recent years. While the country ranked 25th in the 2012 ranking of national higher education systems by the Universitas 21 network of research universities, it dropped to position 38 in the same ranking in 2019.

The Impact of War

The annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine’s eastern territories have had a devastating impact on economic and political life in Ukraine, as well as its education system. According to UNICEF, 10,000 people had been killed and 1.5 million displaced by 2017. About 700 educational facilities had been damaged or shuttered, and some 220,000 children were in urgent need of safe schools. There were 143 HEIs located in the annexed or occupied territories (36 in Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, and 107 in rebel-controlled parts of the Donbas region in the east). These territories were also home to 140 research institutions, representing more than 12 percent of all Ukrainian research institutions and accounting for 31 percent of all tertiary enrollments. As of 2015, only 16 universities and 10 research institutions had successfully moved out of the conflict zones. Ukraine has thus lost a significant part of its educational and scientific resources and has yet to fully resolve the problem of migrants, including students, teachers, and administrative staff, from the annexed and occupied territories.

The first university to set up operations in exile was the Donetsk National University, but only a tiny fraction of its 18,000 students are continuing their education on the new campus in central Ukraine. Ukraine’s Ministry of Education does not recognize diplomas issued by universities that remain in the disputed areas, but students often have the option of attending the exiled universities in online distance education mode. In fact, another exiled university, the prestigious Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University, has become the leading online learning institution in Ukraine.

• Passport copy (First & Last Page)
• Passport size Photographs
• Leaving Certificate
• 10th Mark sheet & Certificate
• 12th Mark sheet & Certificate
• Diploma’s Mark sheets & Completion Certificate (Transcript, if required)
• Bachelor Degree’s Mark sheet (Transcript, if required)
• Bachelor Degree Certificate / Provisional Degree Certificate
• Master Degree’s Mark sheet (Transcript, if required)
• Master Degree Certificate / Provisional Degree Certificate
• Recommendation letter – From 3 different person:
  • Principal
  • HOD
  • Professor/Teacher
• Work experience letter (if any)
• CV
• SOP
• Bank balance certificate ( INR 25 – 30 lakh)
• Notary True copy ( 3 set each)
• Affidavit of sponsor ( Rs.20 stamp paper)
• IELTS/GRE/TOEFL Score Sheet

Cost of living in Ukraine. To live comfortably while you are all over Ukraine, you will need about $ 1,200 to $ 1,500 a year for living costs plus tuition fees. The cost of living in Ukraine is low compared to many other European cities