IT Education in Ukraine
No wonder that in developing countries like Ukraine IT ties to educational centers, because graduates usually do not have enough funds to move to another city and paying relocation bonuses is not common as companies want to keep their costs low. And Outsourcing to Ukraine 2007 Market Study by Goal Europe just confirms that. In Ukraine outsourcing companies are located mainly in traditional scientific centers which were able to preserve maturity and experience of scientific schools from Soviet times and amplify their potential by taking opportunities offered by modern world.
The report says
Some of the main reasons for deteriorating quality of education are low salaries of the teaching personnel and outdated theoretical knowledge, as well as the inflexibility of many universities in preventing the practitioners of software development from teaching additional courses in those universities.
Flexibility and willingness to take new opportunities are reasons why some universities take the lead while others are trying to get along with reputation they had in the past.
What surprises me a bit is that report says that there are around 30,000 graduates theoretically (good word, right?) suitable for software development jobs. When I did my own calculation, very inaccurate though, I came to conclusion that there are about 500 IT graduates each year in Dnipropetrovs'k and I can hardly believe that Dnipropetrovs'k produces only 1.6% of all IT graduates. Probably, we use different approaches to calculate the numbers. Anyway it will be interesting to see what other reports or studies say on this matter.