This year's campaign for the recruitment of foreign citizens to study at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute has ended. It lasted from July 1 to October 15. Director of the Center for International Education Serhiy Maulik told the correspondent of "Kyiv Polytechnic" about its results.
- Serhii Sergiiovych, our country is at war with the Russian aggressor, and in such a situation, it seems impossible to enroll a large number of foreign students to the university. However, the work in this direction has been quite active. Tell us more about it.
- Despite the difficulties you mentioned, we tried to fulfill our task of enrolling foreign citizens. The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, taking into account the current situation, issued an order allowing, as in the previous year, remote admission and distance learning for such citizens. Accordingly, our Center for International Education has focused its work on distance learning opportunities. As the director of the Center, I have introduced online tools that help potential students to apply, pass exams and be enrolled in KPI in a remote format.
Let me tell you about the main ones. At the end of last year, I initiated the introduction of online payment for educational and other services, which did not exist before. With the help of specialists from the Department of Economics and Finance, in March-April this year, this system was implemented and tested together with PrivatBank, and since May, the possibility of online payments has been available at our university. During the period of the system's functioning, more than UAH 6.5 million was transferred by applicants or students to the university's account.
In addition, the system of recruiting foreign citizens for study did not exist before - potential applicants chose our university through their friends/relatives or through agents, which is extremely inefficient under martial law. Therefore, I decided to implement a modern information system for recruiting students at the university. After analyzing the world's leading developers of such systems, we chose DreamApplyOU, an international company headquartered in Tallinn (Estonia), whose software is used to recruit students for study at more than 400 universities around the world and has been implemented at the national level in three EU countries. We are extremely grateful to our Estonian friends who agreed to provide free access to this system to our university as a help to Ukraine. The system costs 25 thousand euros per year, but we paid only for its configuration and customization for our university. Already in May, our specialists, together with coordinators from DreamApple, added all KPI educational programs (there are more than 300 of them), including more than 50 English-language ones.
We also worked actively with faculties and institutes to ensure the availability of teaching and methodological resources for teaching in English, selection of educational programs (15 educational programs of different levels from 9 faculties/institutes) that can be effectively presented in a remote mode. Joint efforts were made to prepare presentation packages to advertise these programs in the global educational markets.
The preparatory work was completed in June, the system with a description of our educational programs was posted at apply.kpi.ua, and approximately in mid-June we began accepting applications from applicants for the 2023 intake. As of today, 330 applicants have been registered in the system, of which more than 100 have been enrolled.
During this year's enrollment, 224 invitations to study were issued (last year - 26). We enrolled 161 foreign citizens (87 last year), including 16 bachelor's degree students, 122 master's degree students, 15 postgraduate students and 8 preparatory students. These students formed 11 academic groups at the ER IAE, ER IEE, ER IMS, FBMI, FIOT, FMM, FPM, FSP. The overwhelming majority of all enrolled students are citizens of the People's Republic of China (120 people), the second largest number is from Turkey (12 people).
Given the martial law in the country, Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in general and the Center for International Education in particular worked in a limited funding mode, so all the activities I mentioned took place without budgets for advertising and promotion. I am sure that if we had financial resources for promotion, the situation with recruitment could be much better, especially since we have experience with companies that aggregate traffic of international higher education students.
I cannot but mention a separate area of raising awareness of Kyiv Polytechnic and our educational programs in the world. With the help of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, namely 27 embassies of Ukraine responsible for 31 countries that are of interest to KPI as a country of potential applicants, a large-scale information campaign was conducted on the opportunities of studying at our university. Our embassies in China and Pakistan were the most active in spreading information about KPI and its educational programs. I also want to note the work of our diplomats in Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Libya. I can frankly say that 2023 was held under the educational star of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in these countries.
At the end of our conversation, I would like to note that the specialists of our university have done a good job both in recruiting foreign citizens to study at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, which will bring financial benefits in such difficult times, and in spreading information about Ukraine and how its largest technical university lives, works and provides quality educational services.