Ukraine might be endowed with plentiful fertile land and have the most up-to-date technology and equipment available, but it still has a shortage of people who know how to reap these advantages.
And for a country
with roughly 70 percent of its 60 million hectares classified as agricultural,
much of which is rich black soil, it doesn’t have a high-profile agricultural
business education program.
The Kyiv
Mohyla Business School will soon change this on Feb. 28 when it launches the first
agricultural master of business administration program.
Called Agro
MBA, the 20-month program at kmbs is designed for top managers who currently work
in agriculture. The curriculum is designed to let executives work while
studying, and has breaks during the farming season.
“We should
bring a higher level of not only technologies which are used on the land but
also the understanding of how important Ukraine is in the world in terms of its
agricultural resources,” said Svitlana Horbenko, head of the Agro MBA program. In
2005-2011, Horbenko headed governmental departments in Kherson and Kirovohrad
Oblasts for agricultural development.
Horbenko
added that with a population of 46 million people, Ukraine can help ease the
global food crisis by feeding up to 300 million people. Instead, the nation
currently does not produce enough food for itself and imports many food
products.
“Agriculture
today won’t revive itself,” she said. “We need managers, an entirely new layer
of people who will usher in those changes.”
To help meet
this demand, one of Ukraine’s biggest agribusinesses, Mriya, opened the Ukrainian
Agricultural School in 2011. The same year the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club
launched the AgroSchool. But these programs are intended mostly for young
specialists and middle-managers. To educate their top executives,
agribusinesses have had to send them abroad for professional development.
Now
students of the Agro MBA program won’t have to leave their country or their
workplace.
The program
consists of 17 different intensive monthly modules that will last four days: Thursday
through Sunday. Three of the modules will involve fieldwork in three different
parts of Ukraine. Also, students will be expected to devote 1.5 hours a day to
self-study.
At the end
of the program, students are expected to present their master’s project and will
receive two diplomas: an MBA diploma from kmbs with a focus on agriculture, and
a postgraduate diploma from Kyiv Mohyla Academy in organizational management.
The list of
subjects includes strategic thinking, business modeling and management in the agricultural
sector, agricultural law, international food markets and development of
leadership potential. They will be taught by kmbs professors who have
consulting experience in the agricultural sector. Managers of Ukrainian agribusinesses
and business associations as well as professors from the Alberta School of
Business in Canada will be invited as guest speakers.
The cost of
the program is $24,500 and the working language is Ukrainian and Russian.
Knowledge of English is not obligatory for applicants.
Kyiv Post staff writer
Oksana Faryna can be reached at [email protected].
