The revision of specialties in higher education institutions should be oriented to the requests of applicants and businesses, but should not harm effective higher education institutions that provide quality training. The director of the Association "Information Technologies of Ukraine" Viktor Valeev said this at the round table "New structure of IT specialties for universities", reports IT Expert.
According to him, today the Ministry of Education and Science (MES) is developing a new structure of specialties for universities. It is assumed that training will be carried out in 27 areas of knowledge and 96 specialties. It is also assumed that universities will train IT specialists in 5 specialties: software engineering (SO), computer science and information technology, computer engineering, system analysis and information security.
"Today, the number of key specialties in which specialists are trained for various sectors of the IT sphere is 12, so the reform naturally causes higher education representatives to fear a possible reduction in departments and teaching staff," Viktor Valeev emphasizes.
According to him, the most popular among applicants is the "Software Engineering" specialty, which is focused on the training of software developers. The competition for this specialty is steadily growing and in 2014 it amounted to 15 people for one budget place. Since there were not enough budget places for all applicants, 25% first-year students are trained in this specialty on a contract basis. In 2014, the maximum volume of state orders and recruitment of applicants fell on the specialty "Computer Science" - 2,600 budget places and 2,700 enrolled, respectively, the share of contract students is only 4%.
It should be noted that, according to the general opinion of IT-business, the problem of the structure of IT specialties in Ukrainian universities is the "imaginary variety" of specialties, which, from the point of view of acquired practical skills, essentially differ little from each other.
Another problem is the focus of higher IT education on the training of "broad profile" specialists. According to many universities, their IT graduates can configure local networks, develop software, and engage in web design, which in reality requires three completely different professional specializations.
