Open AccessFinancing higher education in Ukraine in the 21st century: challenges and prospects for overcoming them
Author(s) -
Maryna Bilinets,
Андрій Буряченко,
Tetiana Paientko
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
fìnansi ukraïni
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2522-4662
pISSN - 2305-7645
DOI - 10.33763/finukr2021.02.098
Subject(s) - higher education , diversification (marketing strategy) , scope (computer science) , decentralization , business , curriculum , finance , quality (philosophy) , economic growth , economics , marketing , market economy , philosophy , epistemology , computer science , programming language
The development of higher education is characterized by new priorities, which necessitates the adjustment of higher education funding mechanisms in response to new challenges. The purpose of this article is to identify these key challenges in Ukraine and justify the possibilities to face them. The analysis of funding of higher education was conducted based on macroeconomic indicators for 2005 to 2020. It is also reviewed that financing of higher education in Ukraine is characterized by decentralization and diversification, which are characterized by an increase in the share of local budgets in the structure of higher education funding in Ukraine and the use of extra-budgetary sources of funding, in the form of tuition fees. The analysis has revealed the following key challenges of financing higher education: massification of higher education, which is characterized by the triad of "high availability - low price - low quality"; change in approaches to educational activities and decrease in the number of students as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic; inefficient model of financing higher education, which results in producing specialists with higher education that do not meet the needs and demands of the labor market. Overcoming the identified challenges can be achieved through reforming higher education models by aligning the structure, scope and quality of training with the needs of the economy and labour market, and its financing, through changing the cost-based approach to financing by results. This, in turn, would help align budget funding with institutional efficiency and curriculum effectiveness, and reduce the number of unclaimed specialists with higher education.