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participation of the civil society; increasing oversight of HEIs; creating a 
better reward and punishment mechanisms for HEI employees; 
standardization of written exams; encouraging academic freedom. 
Thus our purpose is investigating the key development trends and 
problems in Ukrainian HE for finding ways of increasing its 
competitiveness in the Euro integration framework, and in particular for 
reducing educational migration. 
Nowadays, Ukraine is having tough times; reforms are planned 
within almost all public areas. Development of the Ukrainian economy 
depends directly on the quality of education, since it provides potential 
opportunities for increasing labor productivity and, as the consequence, 
growth in the total national revenues. State authorities believe that 
education is the major area along with defense and healthcare that needs 
immediate changes. The government is trying to develop new quality 
standards for HE.
The results of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation‟s poll show that 
most Ukrainians (51%) rate the national HE‟s quality as “average”, 16% 
– as “rather low” and 3.8% – “very low” [5].
The problems of HE date back to the very beginning of Ukrainian 
independence and are complex and systematic, as the result of the lack 
of a clear strategy in this area. The main of them encounter: 1) 
corruption in HEIs (37% of respondents); 2) non-recognition of 
diplomas of Ukrainian HEIs in the world (34%); 3) inconsistency of 
teaching methods with the requirements of the Ukrainian labor market 
(32%); 4) poor material and technical base of HEIs (32%) [5]. Other 
problems are: low competitiveness of Ukrainian universities; mass 
character of HE; outdated teaching methods and transfer of backward 
knowledge to students [8]. 
However, one of the main current problems is the lack of a global 
vision for development of the national HE in general, as well as visions 
of individual HEIs in particular, which makes it impossible to identify 
the demand for professional workers, as well as the fields of study that 
most likely can contribute to the development of society and the nation 
in general. 
After the Revolution of Dignity, there was a need for reformation of 
educational sector in Ukraine. The public initiated some changes, HEIs 
actively developed their projects, and the Ministry of Education and 
Science developed a new edition of legislation in this area. The Higher 

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Education Law became the first large-scale reformist bill adopted by the 
Ukrainian parliament, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, in 2014. The process 
of HE transformation in Ukraine started during difficult times – when 
the economic crisis and the war affected all spheres of social life. 
The adoption of the Law was just the beginning of the reforms. 
Autonomy of HEIs became one of the main issues of the adopted bill, as 
achieving success under the conditions of significant power centralization 
is impossible. The content of trainings was previously not defined by the 
universities themselves, but by the Ministry of Education and Science of 
Ukraine. The ability to independently determine curriculum will give 
universities the impetus for improvement [13]. In the context of increasing 
autonomy of HEIs, measures were taken to reduce the number of 
disciplines studied by a student per semester to 8. This is an attempt to get 
rid of the echo of the Soviet system, where students were forced to attend 
a large number of courses, while in the Western Europe and the United 
States only 4-5 basic disciplines are studied. As the result of the excessive 
number of courses students learn similar material under different titles of 
subjects, which leads to extra work by the students with little or no results. 
The consequences include the loss of interest in learning and the search 
for “easier ways” of studying – cheating on exams, plagiarizing essays 
and diploma works etc. [12]. 
Universities‟ autonomy should also encounter financial issues. In 
2014, only one significant change has been adopted within the financial 
sector – the permit for universities to hold accounts in state-owned 
banks that should reduce technical barriers for payment transfers. The 
issue of financing education is one of the most painful, as it concerns 
many people including both teachers and students. We distinguish the 
following key problems in this direction: 1) excessive accumulation of 
power by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine; 2) 
corruption and bribery at all levels of the system; 3) imperfect system of 
financing via the state ordering system. 
A rather big, and constantly increasing, share of the state budget is 
being spent on HE annually (Table 6.1), but funds are sprayed through a 
large number of universities, teachers and students, even though the 
general dynamics of the Ukrainian HEIs and students‟ quantity in 2010-
2018 is negative (Table 6.2). The budget is often used not for attaining 
socially important results, but instead for funding some outdated 
processes with no formal performance indicators for evaluating the 
effectiveness of public spending, such as increase in labor productivity 
or employers‟ level of satisfaction with the quality of workforce. 

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Table 6.1