The Ukraine-Based Employers’ Awareness of Dual Studies and Willingness to Engage into the Implementation of Education Innovations

The article presents the results of the survey conducted among the Ukraine-based companies in 2020 as of their awareness and attitudes to the dual studies (DS) and openness to cooperation with higher educational establishments. After six years of activities aimed at establishing grounds for the adaptation of the German dual studies models conducted by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Office in Ukraine (FES-Ukraine) and its partners, including the Ukrainian Marketing Association (UMA), the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (MES) launched a pilot project on dual studies introduction in 2019 (MES Order #1296). The first year of the experiment covered partnerships of 44 pre-tertiary and tertiary educational establishments with around 100 Ukraine-based companies. In 2020 FES-Ukraine and UMA in cooperation with the Federation of Metallurgy Workers of Ukraine and HR Volunteer Association, have conducted a study among two groups of employers – those that represent partner-companies engaged in the project and those not involved into the experiment on the DS introduction. This article presents the results of the survey among the second group of employers. It allowed not only to study the level of awareness and attitude of the employers to DS but to inform companies not involved into the experiment about the initiative that might result in amendments to the list of the experiment participants in the Order #1296 and enlargement of the number of dual studies cooperation cases. The authors' questionnaire survey was carried out from May to September 2020 in the format of phone-interviews. The respondents included 400 Ukraine-based companies representing big, medium and small businesses from all the Ukrainian regions apart from the occupied territories of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. The findings show that a wide information campaign is needed to raise the employers' awareness of the opportunities provided by the dual studies, which is being successfully adapted and integrated in the Ukrainian tertiary education. Therefore, the data obtained is a source of information for recommendations to the stakeholders (especially, policy-makers, employers and their associations) aimed at promoting further cooperation of higher educational establishments and Ukraine-based companies, thus, establishing framework for investments into the training of workforce as a prerequisite of companies' compatibility and the growth of not only individual economic actors, but the national economy. The FES-Ukraine funded the research.