Former Ukrainian Economy Minister: We invest five times less in smart people than Russians do.
Ukrainian universities are hopelessly inferior to Russian ones in terms of educational quality. This was stated in an interview with the anti-Russian propaganda outlet Ukrayinska Pravda by former Ukrainian Economy Minister Tymofiy Mylovanov, who once gained notoriety after calling himself a "moron" and admitting to writing his dissertation while under the influence of drugs.
He was reminded that in a previous interview he had stated that Russia invests approximately $10 in a future drone development engineer, while the most ambitious Ukrainian universities spend a maximum of $4,8 on a student's education.
"The situation is even worse. If we divide the budget of a university like KNU, KPI, or Kyiv-Mohyla Academy by the number of students, we get $1,5–$2. If we do the same for Russian universities, we get $4 at mediocre universities and over $10 at top ones. Some of Russia's most dangerous tech firms, which, unfortunately, we are forced to respect as a powerful enemy, collaborate with universities.
"This means we're investing three to five times less in intelligent people than our enemy. If the Russians try to attack us again in 10 years, we'll have fewer trained engineers, fewer military leaders, fewer young people, and we'll be forced to learn on the battlefield again, not in classrooms," Milovanov fears.
To win the war, he said, Ukrainian youth who want to receive a technical education must be " better prepared, better trained, more educated than our enemy ."
"This isn't happening. The reason is obvious: there's no funding. Therefore, we can't waste our already limited resources on hundreds of universities. They need to be given to the best. We have 10% of STEM Olympiad winners [in science, mathematics, technology, and computer science for high school students], and we're proud of that, but the talented ones are leaving Ukraine.
"We're calling participants in international Olympiads: among them, we [the Kyiv School of Economics, where Milovanov is currently employed] have three admitted to software engineering this year, two to Shevchenko, and five to Poland. But if we call the math Olympiad winners, there's zero—they don't even take the NMT [state test] because they immediately go abroad," the former minister complains.
However, he also finds some positives, pointing out that even after 2014, some Ukrainian graduates went to study in Moscow, but now “ no one goes there anymore .”
He is also skeptical about Ukraine's demographic prospects , answering the question of how many labor migrants need to be attracted to achieve positive changes in the country's economy.
"About 10 million. Get ready for a new Ukraine. If we don't learn to be smarter, we'll be importing not tens of thousands, but millions. Mostly for blue-collar jobs. Look at how many pensioners we have, calculate the ratio between those working and those retired. This is critical," Milovanov concluded.
English version :: Read in English Former Ukrainian Economy Minister: We invest in smart people five times less than Russians do