Due to political and economic instability, as well as Russia’s war in the country’s eastern Donbas region, few students ventured to Ukraine between 2014 and 2017. In 2014, little more than 63,000 foreign students came to Ukraine to study.
But Ukrainian universities are slowly but steadily recovering their positions and gaining in popularity with foreign students. By 2018, international students and their parents appeared to have somewhat recovered trust in Ukraine and its universities. More than 75,500 studied here in 2018 and the number seems to be trending upwards.
The top countries sending students to Ukraine are India (20 percent), Morocco (10 percent), Azerbaijan (8 percent), and Turkmenistan (7 percent), according to data from the Ukrainian State Center for International Education, part of the Ministry of Education of Ukraine.
A foreign student in Ukraine is protected as much as any foreigner in Ukraine staying on legal grounds, multiple experts specializing in immigration law told the Kyiv Post. However, foreign students will not receive free medical care in Ukraine and need to buy health insurance before arrival.
Foreign students coming to Ukrainian universities should firstly rely on trusted education agents in their countries, advises Vasyl Cherednichenko, an immigration lawyer. They also need to be diligent in resolving all visa-related issues and receiving legal status within 90 days of their arrival to Ukraine. “And, of course, they ought to study well, because in case of dropping out, the right of residence will be canceled. And you will have to leave Ukraine within a week,” Cherednichenko warned.
Popular subjects, universities
Medicine is the most popular field of study among foreign students here in Ukraine, with that subdivided into general medicine, medical care, dentistry and pharmacy. All these medical majors bring 45 percent of foreign students to Ukraine.
Economic fields, including finance, business and management make up the second most attractive group of majors offered by universities in Ukraine to overseas students. Construction and engineering stand out as the third most popular areas of study.
International relations and law may look like niche subjects, but they are the traditional majors for those who aspire to become future elites, or leaders of nations that send their youths to Ukraine for studies. Plus, Ukrainian art schools also attract students from abroad, with Ukraine becoming increasingly well-known for its history of fine and performing arts.
As for the most popular universities, two leading institutions are based in Kharkiv, a city with 1.4 million inhabitants located 500 kilometers to the east of Kyiv. The Kharkiv National Medical University and Karazin Kharkiv National University lead the list, with each teaching about 4,400 foreign students. Odesa National Medical University and Bogomolets National Medical University of Kyiv each teach about 4,000 foreign students.
Only two non-medical schools make it to the top ten of Ukraine’s most popular universities among foreigners. Besides the above-mentioned Karazin Kharkiv National University, there is also MAUP, or the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management. MAUP, a private university, teaches about 2,000 foreigners across its six departments.
With the recent appointment of Oleksiy Honcharuk as Ukraine’s prime minister, MAUP can boast of having trained two consecutive prime ministers: Honcharuk, and his predecessor, Volodymyr Groysman, who used to study at the university’s Vinnytsia branch.
The number of international students coming to Ukraine is steadily recovering, and universities are already seeing the benefit as students get access to affordable, quality education.
Kyiv Polytechnic
“Foreigners are choosing the most attractive countries for their studies,” says former ambassador Volodymyr Koval, who now works as chairman at the Center for International Education at Kyiv Polytechnic University, also known as KPI in Ukraine.
Koval continues and says that “traditionally we consider the USA and (Western) Europe to be (top countries).” With regret he adds that Ukraine and former Soviet Republics are still not considered a priority destination for many foreign students.
This year, KPI has enrolled 178 foreigners, compared to 167 a year ago. The total foreign enrollment number at the KPI as of Sept. 1 amounts to 404 students, with most of them coming from Turkey (109 students), followed by Ecuador (39), China (36), and Egypt (31).
Other countries have sent fewer students to KPI, from 1 to 23. There is one student each from France, Japan, Norway and the U. S. Eight Russians are also enrolled at KPI.
According to Koval, KPI provides world-class training in such fields as IT, cybersecurity and nuclear security, attracting students from all over the world. Back in the 1980s, 1,000 foreigners per year studied at KPI, which now bears the name of Igor Sikorsky — an alumnus and famous helicopter designer.
Koval used to work as a professor at Lviv Polytechnic University. While doing his postgraduate research he interned twice at U.S. universities. In the 1990s Koval switched to diplomacy and served as Ukraine’s ambassador to a number of Middle Eastern countries. Now he is in charge of boosting KPI’s international outreach.
“We make no distinction between Ukrainian and foreign students and we set identical requirements to them,” says Koval. However, foreign university students in Ukraine do pay higher fees, around double the typical price. And due to high requirements and difficult tests, ten percent of foreign students fail to graduate.
However, foreign students receive support throughout their stay at the KPI. Koval explains that his center “provides a (foreign) student with absolutely everything necessary for studying.” This includes immigration and visa documentation, language and pre-university training in specific subjects, excursions around Ukraine and team building through sports and other activities.
Language, pre-university studies
Many young people who come to Ukraine are not ready to join the student ranks. Some just want to learn Russian or Ukrainian and get to know more about the culture. They can improve their language and academic skills either at universities or private language schools.
Most universities aiming to attract foreign students have pre-university courses lasting for a year or so, just like KPI.
The Center for Language Development, or CLD, is a private language school, which started in 2001 with a specialization in teaching Russian and Ukrainian to foreigners. Nowadays, the school teaches foreign languages to Ukrainians as well.
Oksana Guseynova, who manages the center, remembers that back in 2001, Russian was more in demand and “our first student was a guard of the French embassy.” The demand for Ukrainian came a few years later and some of the first students of Ukrainian were employees of the French retailer Auchan.
In the early 2000s, Kyiv was predominantly a Russian-speaking city and, having studied Ukrainian for a month, the Auchan students told their teacher “we have studied for a month, and when we go to a restaurant nobody answers back in Ukrainian,” Guseynova remembers. So, they needed to switch to Russian for practical purposes.
After a month of studying Ukrainian and then a month of Russian studies, the French learners were perfectly happy to discover the existence of ‘surzhyk’ (a Russian-Ukrainian mixed language): “This is exactly what we need. We are going to Bessarabsky market, speaking Russian-Ukrainian, and this is how it works.”
This modest beginning grew into professional results. Now Auchan employs French managers, who speak fluent Ukrainian.
CLD boasts of competitive strength in teaching Russian compared to its counterparts in Russia. The school teaches the Russian language online to Westerners, and has noticed that Polish people are deciding to study Russian in Kyiv.
“We are closer to Europe, we have more communication with Europe. And their way to us is shorter,” said Guseynova.
Besides teaching commercial clients, the CLD also works with refugees, whose language studies are financed by UN projects in Ukraine. Deny Matundo says that he “studies Ukrainian, because he wants to study at a university in Ukraine.” His friend Frizak, from Somalia, studies Ukrainian “to understand people and to study in school.”
Deny and Frizak find Ukrainian grammar and vocabulary difficult. Nevertheless, Deny “wants to speak Ukrainian just like he speaks French.” And Frizak advises students of Ukrainian to not be afraid — the process of learning the language is not as daunting as it seems.
Other students suggest enjoying the tourist side of Ukraine like the Black Sea coast in Kherson Oblast. The students shared this advice with the Kyiv Post in fluent Ukrainian.
Students “need to develop not only by the book, but also socialize. They should know what is happening in the country not only from the manual but through real stories,” said their language teacher, Anna Levchuk. She encourages students to sing Ukrainian songs, watch movies, and learn more about the culture of their new home country.
International trends
University education is a major branch of the economy for countries receiving students, as well as good business for the universities teaching them. Besides tuition, students pay rent, buy food, purchase clothing and travel.
Young people enrich the cultural life of their host cities too and eventually foreign students can act as an available talent pool for the countries that have trained them.
Foreign graduates of German universities, for example, enjoy a simplified procedure for obtaining a permanent residency, a gateway to citizenship. If these graduates find a full time job in their field within a year of graduation, they can stay. For foreign students in Ukraine, the path to eventual citizenship is more complicated and time-consuming.
U.S. universities, meanwhile, accepted 1.09 million foreign students in 2018, which roughly amounts to 5 percent of the total university enrollment. Ukraine has some way to go in achieving this level of popularity. But the potential benefits could be huge: In 2017 alone, the U. S. Department of Commerce reported that international students contributed “$42.4 billion to the US economy through tuition, room and board, and other expenses.”
