The number of IT bachelors graduating from Ukrainian universities will increase significantly in the coming years. In 2024, more than 20,000 students will obtain a bachelor’s degree in IT (this is 23% more than in 2020).
This is evidenced by the results of the “Analysis of IT education in Ukrainian universities” developed by experts from the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO).
In Ukraine, the demand for new IT specialists counts up to 30000-50000 per year. In turn, higher education institutions annually produce an average of 16200 graduates with bachelor’s degrees in IT.
Colleges and technical schools prepare an average of 6300 junior specialists per year, and this number is increasing. However, junior specialists without further education will be insufficiently involved in the IT market, so they will continue their university studies.
The number of IT students in Ukrainian universities financed by the state has been gradually declining over five years, but it was significantly expanded in 2020.
In the future, the number of IT graduates will also depend on the positive demographic situation and the proportion of university applicants who chose to be IT specialists. Experts developed three scenarios, under which this proportion can change.
A “dynamic growth” scenario: the proportion of university applicants taking IT courses will continue to grow at the current rate up to 16.1% in 2026. Accordingly, in 2030 we can expect the production of 37.4 thousand new specialists, which roughly corresponds to the current real change in the number of specialists in the market.
A “restrained growth” scenario: the proportion of university applicants taking IT courses will remain at the same level as now — 12%. Under this scenario, in 2030 we can expect the production of 27.8 thousand new specialists. In this scenario, the increase in the number of graduates is achieved only through demographic changes.
A “slow growth” scenario: the proportion of university applicants taking IT courses will gradually decrease to 10% in 2026. Accordingly, in 2030 we can expect the production of 23.2 thousand new specialists.
“Thus, the system of formal higher education currently does not meet the market demand for IT specialists and, obviously, will not be able to achieve this goal in the future. Retraining and non-formal education of specialists in other areas, as well as immigration of IT specialists and attraction of foreigners remotely, are also important “growth points” (outside the formal education system) for human capital in the IT sector,” Ihor Samokhodsky, ICT Sector Head at BRDO, said.
Let us recall that the immigration mechanism, which allows IT specialists to work as private entrepreneurs without additional restrictions while being single tax payers without a residence permit, has become available since 2020. Moreover, from October 2020, foreigners do not need to make an “extra departure” from Ukraine to obtain a temporary residence permit in Ukraine.
The analysis in Ukrainian is available for download.