Career guidance-2017: a lot has been done but we can and should do more

Perhaps, the most important issue on the agenda of the Academic Council of UzhNU meeting, which was held on Thursday, April 27, was the discussion of the results of career guidance campaign, carried out by the university on the eve of admission campaign - 2017. This has been the most large-scale career-guidance campaign in the history of our university. Most faculties and university departments have been involved in it. It is clear that the results of our work will be fully analyzed when the admission campaign is over, but now we can make the first important conclusions.

"Career guidance is one of the key issues we have to deal with. I can say more: it is the issue of our survival, our future, - said the Vice-Rector for Academic Policy and Research Ihor Korol. - Career guidance should be not only on university managers’ agenda, it should be the issue of concern for all the deans and teachers. We all have to produce a better image of UzhNU."

The struggle for potential students is very serious nowadays. According to the results of the survey conducted among the first-year students of UzhNU, the most important arguments in favour of a higher educational institution for school leavers were the following three:

- the university is highly rated and provides high quality education;

- it  provides a wide choice of training programs, students are particularly interested in;

- it’s prestigious to study here.

 Ihor Korol informed the members of the Academic Council that this year's career-guidance campaign had covered 164 Transcarpathian schools, where UzhNU "agents" had met with 4635 school leavers. The highest attention was paid to remote rayons - Rakhiv, Tyachiv, Khust, Mizhhirya and Irshava. They communicated not only with the school leavers but also with the pupils of the tenth grade, most of whom are about to decide what they want to become in the future and what university to choose.

The Rector of UzhNU Volodymyr Smolanka stressed the importance of timely and high quality career-guidance campaign, especially when the number of school leavers was reducing every year, because of the demographic situation, and the struggle for Ukrainian applicants was becoming more and more serious not only among domestic but also foreign universities. Therefore, we have to consider all critical remarks, think about new forms of career guidance and begin to work with 10-graders in June, - concluded the Rector.

 As a result, the Academic Council approved the proposal to prepare a new  career-guidance conception as soon as possible, extend the network of consultation centers across the Transcarpatian region, initiate and develop new forms and methods of career guidance and develop a plan of preparation and production of advertising and campaign materials of SHEI "UzhNU" and media support of career guidance activities in academic year 2017-2018.

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