Yesterday, the universities finished to receive applications from graduates. This time interval is the most memorable due to the excitement at the admission boards. It will be horrifying as for students who had to wait all day at the door of the universities (the first week of admission) as for admission boards, who worked overtime. But it is not necessary to hung on the very problem , it is better to focus on options to solve it. One way that meets the needs of current time, according to observers of the civil network OPORA, may be implementing of the online registration. What do universities think about this , OPORA asked executive secretaries of the admission boards of Ivano-Frankivsk National Medical University - Igor Sarapuka, and Carpathian National University of  Vasyl Stefanyk - Ivan Hasyuk.

 

Given the large concentrations of students in the first week of admissions, is it necessary to introduce the online registration of students the next year?

  • Igor Sarapuk: 

- Registration of students in online mode, is a requirement of modern time and it is completely impossible to manage without it. First of all, it will positively affect both the work of a board, and the entrants. This will virtually eliminate long lines at the universities, which were this year, when applicants try to apply to several schools, moving throughout Ukraine, creating a boom. The introduction of electronic registry will bring all this excitement to nothing. 

  • Ivan Hasyuk:

- Our university was ready for such a registration system for students last year , and we stand for implementing such a system. The mechanism may be built as follows: it can be done both at the university site, and at the national level or on the basis of  "Competition" system  where the applicant comes to the site, selects a registration form, captures all relevant information, resulting in appearing  in a contest database of the respective university. This allows you to control the number of applications in universities, the number of universities chosen by applicant. So it is possible to check the reliability of data submitted by applicants. The only problem in this case is the average rating of the school certificate, as the annexes of certificates are not registered in a central unified database. But the reliability of the data can be checked within five days after receipt of the documents when the applicant submits the original documents to the university. We were ready to implement this system in our university, but the Terms of admission to universities in 2010 will not allow this, because each application must be filed and signed by applicant personally. 


During last year's admissions there was a sufficient number of applicants that submitted documents for dozens of specialties. This year the Ministry of Education restricts this number to five universities and three specialties in each of the university. But the number of applications to universities has not decreased. Almost all applicants submitted applications for three specialties, which often had no logical connection between each other. Representatives of universities explained it in such a way:

  • Ihor Sarapuk: 

- First of all, there is no career guidance work since high school. When in high school, students try to use most of their opportunities, i.e. apply for the maximum number of specialties, not thinking on what is useful or appropriate.  

  • Ivan Hasyuk: 

- This is a professional disorientation of the entrants - I apply where I can join, but not where I want to learn. That is not the chosen profession but the chosen opportunity to study. The reason is the shortcomings of modern vocational school, after all, perhaps, in  higher education. Pre-university education practically does not work. Once universities organized distant schools, where entrants listening to lectures for a year, did the lab work, got used to the teachers, thus focusing on a specialty. 


How to solve this problem, but not limiting the number of schools where the graduate can apply?

  • Ihor Sarapuk: 

- Without limiting the number of schools where the applicant may submit an application, you can structure them and allow the entrant to submit applications to the universities within one direction of training. Let it be the five schools, but one direction. If this is medicine, let it be the medicine, if the technical direction, only technical, etc., so you can avoid problems. 

  • Ivan Hasyuk: 

- This is a problem of national scope. You said without limiting, I say that the number of schools (where the applicant may submit an application. - Ed.) should be limited to three. This should lessen confusion for students. The second issue is employment. If we would have resolved the issue of jobs for skilled professionals, then we had professional direction to the applicant. Now we, for example, produce Ukrainian lawyers almost two times more than in all Western Europe, they can’t find a job anywhere, but people subconsciously and consciously want to become lawyers. This applies to many other professions. Meanwhile, the specialties with the employment prospects remain unpopular. University graduates should be provided with jobs, there should be the relationship of school and university students and centralized distribution of graduates. 

 

Ivan Marunyak

Civil Network OPORA