Competencies in Higher Education Standards of Ukraine: Definition, Content and Requirements for the Formation Level

The Ukrainian higher education system is in a state of reform, the vectors of which correspond to the Bologna process, sectoral European integration, and the competence paradigm. One of the areas of change is the creation of higher education standards (HES), which are approved by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. HES contain lists of general and professional competencies that must be developed by graduates of higher education institutions (HEI), as well as expected program learning outcomes. HEI’s teachers are mostly dissatisfied with the quality of HES, but do not try to change them, but treat the requirements of these standards formally. This is confirmed by the results of an anonymous survey of 50 teachers of engineering specialties and 50 teachers of medical specialties of Ukrainian HEI. The study is devoted to the reasons for the creation of low-quality HES and ways to improve them. For this purpose, it is proposed to shorten the list and names of competencies with fixation in the Law of Ukraine “On Higher Education”; establish requirements for the necessary levels of formation of all competencies for the bachelor's, master's and doctor of philosophy educational levels; carry out assessment of the formation of competences in parallel with the assessment of students’ academic progress according to ECTS; to change the approach to creating and making changes into HES.