OREANDA-NEWS. On April 28, 2009 The second meeting of the Discussion Club was initiated by SCM and took place in Lvov, in the Ukrainian Catholic University. The meeting was titled "Ensuring a dialog between the labour market and tertiary education in Ukraine", reported the press-centre of SCM.

Please, note that the first meeting of the Discussion Club took place in March 2009 in Donetsk and united representatives of higher education institutions, employers and expert community of Eastern Ukraine (Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov Regions).

Participants of the Discussion Club meeting in Lvov presented case studies of interaction between higher education institutions and employers of Western Ukraine (Volyn, Ivano-Frankovsk, Lvov, Rovno, Ternopol, Khmelnitsk and Chernovtsy Regions), which allow the students to get skills and knowledge required by the real sector of economy at this early stage. Also, the meeting discussed new initiatives of employers and universities in this area, the international practices and specific actions, which can and must be made by the education system and Ukrainian universities to provide their graduates with the education actually demanded employers.

"SCM is the biggest Ukrainian employer and it is interested in improvement of the quality of higher education of Ukraine. To eliminate the gap between the labour market and the education area we initiated Contemporary Education Program". In the last two years, within the framework of the program, we have been implementing the national project Compass university ranking, the objective of which is to identify the higher education institutions, which comply with the labour market requirements to the most extent. "The results of Compass university ranking 2009 will be made public in a month, in May 2009", stated Natalia Krivulina, Project Coordinator of Discussion Club and SCM Project Manager. - The objective of the Discussion Club is to ensure an effective dialog between the labour market and the system of higher education in Ukraine and set up an effective platform for Ukrainian universities and employers from all Ukrainian regions to be able to hear each other and start working together to ensure practical value of the higher education".

The meeting of the Discussion Club of Ukraine's western region was attended by 50 representatives of the education sector, local government, employers, experts and media.

In particular, the participants of the Discussion Club included representatives of the National University "Lviv Polytehnik", Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukrainian Catholic University, Lvov City Council, Ivano-Frankovsk Employers' Organization, Lvov Business School, Regional Office of the National University of Strategic Studies, European Business Associations, "International Standard" Audit Company, SC "Scanlak Ukraine" and others.

During the meeting representatives of higher education institutions and employers presented their case studies of cooperation of the tertiary education system and real sector of economy.

"Labour market of Western Ukraine has several interesting parameters. First of all, Ukraine's western region has lots of big enterprises and quite active middle and small businesses. Secondly, IT business and other business services are well presented here. Today's meeting of the Discussion Club was very interesting. We managed to take a new look at collaboration between higher education institutions and the labour market; we learnt about the new programs designed to improve the quality of education. We also defined the most urgent problems for the region. They will be referred to the Ministry of Education for further discussions", noted Natalya Yemchenko, SCM Director of Public Relations and Communications. "Today, on the eve of the university entrance exams 2009 it is very important to strengthen and improve the efficiency of cooperation between higher education institutions and employers all over Ukraine and implement the most efficient practices. I am sure that higher education institutions, which closely cooperate with the real sector of economy, will win the fight for the best university applicants".

In 2009 the Discussion Club plans to hold meetings in southern (Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozh’ye, Nikolayev, Odessa and Crimea) and central (Kyiv, Vinnitsa, Zhitomir, Kirovograd, Poltava, Sumy, Cherkassy and Chernigov Regions and Kyiv City) regions of Ukraine.

For more information about the SCM’s programme Contemporary Education, Compass university ranking and Discussion Club, please visit the SCM’s Social Projects/Contemporary Education section on the corporate website of SCM Group.