The IT market grows even during the war, but specialists lack quality education. How to change it?
The typical Ukrainian IT worker has a predominantly higher technical education, is not lower than Intermediate, according to the IT Ukraine Association report for 2021. 60% of specialists have more than three years of experience. But problems begin when any player in the Ukrainian market is looking for new personnel. Video Day Ukrainian IT companies ask the future specialist not about his diploma, but about his experience and knowledge.
Even if you know the 9th grade of the school, you have a chance to get into the company. But students in the current educational system do not gain practical skills and understanding of processes within companies. Therefore, IT companies began to open their academies, which can give Junior employees basic skills in 3-6 months. Such short -term programs allow the company to quickly prepare the employee for basic highly specialized tasks.
Time passes, a person needs to develop further, and without the desired base it is difficult to switch to Middle or Senior level. These gaps are difficult to study in 3 months - mathematical knowledge, critical thinking, understanding of work IT systems. Higher education institutions should come to the rescue. Unfortunately, the current approaches of universities remotely meet the demands and expectations of the market. To change it is real. How exactly? Adapt an academic load.
American education, which can be an example of imitation here, is not focused on years of study. Students have a certain amount of loans to be closed and it correlates with the level of knowledge that a student wants to gain. Now the Ukrainian bachelor proposes that it should be done for 4 years. However, the student could adjust the training for himself, depending on what he needed.
If they need this knowledge now and they are ready to learn intensively - the same level of knowledge can be obtained in two years. If they combine work with work and do not rush, they may take more than four years. Students with worse levels of knowledge can take a course of mathematics, and students who already have the appropriate amount of knowledge could close a certain number of loans in advance.
If you put this strategy into life, students can spend time mastering additional skills rather than repeating the available ones. Combine theory with practice to integrate into the market. Methodical materials for Ukrainian IT education do not have time to change technologies. It is important that graduates have applied knowledge, not just theoretical ones. For example, Set University students will be able to solve real IT companies, to intervene in IT companies.
Instead of the diploma work, they will make their own startup and protect it in the investor panel. An important goal for any university is that students from the university are already founded by IT companies. During his studies, the university should help students find their place in the market and know its main players. It is important for them to have professional network and mentors that will help you build a career and start your own business.
To do this, the university should involve IT specialists and company practitioners in teaching and participating in the life of university. To develop product thinking that will allow you to create companies. Now the added cost of the product is settled in Western projects that Ukrainian specialists work on an outsource model. In Ukraine, there is less developed entrepreneurship culture than in the West.
The general competence of the entrepreneur includes a total of 15 skills that the European commission has collected in three groups. It is the ability to see ideas and opportunities, knowledge how to manage resources (financial, human and psychological) and the ability to embody the idea among uncertainty, mistakes and work with others. The student will not study this in a short period.
IT education will help you learn business and give narrow skills for the market: pitching, business plan construction, business digital development with product and IT specifications. This will create the preconditions for new Ukrainian IT entrepreneurs that will open their companies, create new jobs and attract investments in Ukraine. Go to a master's degree for career growth, not for formality.
Master's degree should be a tool for specialists with experience that will allow you to build a management or scientific career, not hang in the frame on the wall. So the master's degree works in America and Europe - it allows a professional to move to a new level with new knowledge, will allow you to build a managerial or scientific career. Effective education cannot be cheap. Good teachers in Ukraine can either go to university for $ 500 or earn $ 5,000 as developers in an IT company.
University units can now be offered to classroom practitioners market salaries. Many IT companies are now collaborating with universities, launching joint educational programs or courses to prepare and find future employees. But this is not enough for the market that suffers from the lack of staff. The transformation of IT education will not only help the sector grow new talents, but will support the resistance to the economy.
The export of computer services in the first half of 2022 showed growth by 23%compared to the same period of the previous year, according to the National Bank. The IT market is not just growing in the war-in the first half of the year the industry paid UAH 32. 6 billion in taxes. IT sector is important now to keep students, students and graduates, to communicate with Ukraine and to create an opportunity to intervene in IT companies. Even if they are in Europe.
If we lose these people now, the future in the IT sector in Ukraine may not be. This industry depends entirely on people. We already have a positive example when the Ministry of Education has successfully conducted national multidisciplinary testing in 23 European countries to facilitate it. In just three months in the war, the Ministry of Education and Science has created online testing for entrants to Ukrainian higher education institutions. Before that, there were no such cases.