ASSESSING THE STAFFING LEVEL IN THE AREA OF EDUCATION: REGIONAL ASPECT

Abstract

This article provides an assessment of the staffing level in Ukraine’s education system by the following criteria: number of academic and teaching staff dynamics for higher education institutions of Ukraine (III–IV accreditation levels) and their concentration by regions; the dynamics of postgraduate and doctoral programs performance indicators and research degree students concentration by regions; the structure (the ratio) of full-time employees in the area of education against the overall employment structure by types of business activity; employee movement indicators in Ukraine’s education system. A comprehensive integrated assessment of quantitative and qualitative dimensions of human resources is critical in terms of reflecting the current state and trends in the education system development. Based on the evaluation results, it is revealed that the number of academic and teaching staff in education institutions tends to decrease over the years, as well as the number of employees having research degrees and academic ranks. The negative downward trend has also been observed in the number of postgraduate students in the analyzed period. It is reported that the highest concentration of personnel engaged in higher education is observed in the city of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk and Odessa regions. The Analysis of employee movement in the education sector showed that in 2018, the intensity of education staff inflow exceeded the intensity of its outflow, which is a positive trend that contributes to reducing the load per vacancy. To retain and enhance the staffing capacity, it is recommended to reduce the academic workload for University teaching staff as an incentive to facilitate their further realization as researches; create sectoral clusters with the involvement of education entities that will contribute to increasing funding for research and technological development; to motivate more active participation of higher education institutions in a range of international research programs, grant and scholarship schemes and competitions which will help to boost academic staff mobility and exchange of best practice among international partners.