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Ukrainian Audit and Accounting Education in the Sphere of Economic Crisis Regulation Phenomena

Megjelent: Polgári Szemle 2010. június – 6. évfolyam, 3. szám


OKSANA CHUMAK PHD, associate professor, Kharkov Institute of Finance of Ukrainian State University of Finance and International Trade.
Efficient Ukraine penetration into the world community can be conducted via European educational and scientific sphere. This process implies the acceptance of the common social economic rules and the formation of the corresponding domestic policy with gained advantages of the national education as well.

Nowadays globalization leads to competition in both economic and social spheres of our life, I mean the professionalism of the staff in any company or organization is a dominant factor. These processes show the evident connection between globalization, economy and higher education. Educational potential of the country and its intellectual activity must be aimed at the creation of profound scientific complexes.

As prof. F. Butynets says, a real accountant is not only an auditor but also a teacher of a businessman, an entrepreneur or even a CEO. Being a professional requires innovative thinking, keeping in touch with other progressive financier, supporting managers of different levels to make managerial decisions. In the conditions of economic crisis phenomena it is undoubtedly difficult for any country to keep its leading positions in education because the recruiting market demands are constantly changing and financing of educational services are being complicated.

Changes in social economic spheres of country life raise new demands to reform the system of education that leads to competition and provides a definitely new level of development. During education modernization process it is necessary to take into consideration the consequences of socalled “information crisis” connected with huge storage of information appearing every day. The aim of educational process is becoming challenging because from the one hand the education is expected to fulfill the conventional tasks such as involving an individual onto the world experience and from another – to get this individual ready to volatile life conditions developing such qualities as self-perfection and creativity.

To build up more stable economy one need the professionals of new standards. Students during their university years gain all necessary knowledge and relevant to their specialties skills, which will enable them to be competitive, innovative in their future moving up the ladder. The guiding line of the Ukrainian education is aimed at entering the European education sphere that’s why our domestic education system is gradually being modernized corresponding to EU requirements.

In 2007 in Ukraine the process of new educational standards implementation was launched. This process embraces the aggregate of standards that define the content of higher education, means of quality diagnostics and normative term of studying. The content of higher education is defined as the system of knowledge conditioned by the society needs and it is formed with taking into consideration the perspectives of its development, including culture, science, technics and technology.

So, the most principal point is to form a “module” of the future professional and it is certainly necessary to consider the reasons, which generate crisis phenomena in economy. The standards can be divided into three categories: state, branch and the ones of higher educational establishments.

In pedagogics there are three approaches to form a “module: of a professional and one of them is implemented into the branch standards of domestic higher education system. This module unites professional activity and personal training that form educational professional programs. Thus, domestic standards regulate a list of skills to solve problems in other words – system of competences. During the implementation of higher education reforms it is important to unite the best domestic scholars’ experience with the overseas achievements in order to be sure that all the graduates are highlyqualified specialists, competitive and confident in their personal storage of knowledge.

There are 351 higher educational establishments in Ukraine and 185 of them teach 15 000 specialists in “Accounting and Audit” sphere that causes great competition between universities, institutes and graduates as well. Preparation of an accountant is tightly connected with the formation of multi-leveled structures in education. The peculiarity of multi-leveled system in Ukrainian universities lies in its incompleteness, in search of optimal managerial solutions to use varies studying programs. In Europe the main criterion of applying for a job is still high level of professionalism and this feature has become typical for Ukrainian recruiting sector as well.

The questions as for the quantity and quality of education levels such as “Bachelor”, “Master”, “Specialist – “Bachelor” and “Specialist – Master” are pretty much arguable. But the postgraduation institute for seeking Candidate’s Degree and Doctor’s Degree are necessary to prepare a professional accountant. Practice and science have always been integrated, stimulating one another, this combination gives Ukraine an obvious advantage before the European practice. Boulogne process prior idea implies integration of practice and science in all educational establishments. Focusing on Boulogne process we can modernize the qualification system of accounting and economic legislative sector, considering domestic stable competitive experience that helps to keep existing educational traditions and make them corresponding to the European standards.

Crisis phenomena in economy cause more demands to accounting specialists because global dependent world some problems appear in preparation of these sort of professionals specialists. They are as follows:

– information storage necessary to perception exaggerates psycho-physiological level;
– changes in economy law can be vague and cause making the decisions in non-typical conditions;
– transition to international accounting standards requires constant knowledge upgrading;
– distinctive branch features can’t allow students to absorb all accounting peculiarities during their studying.

Given conditions aren’t exhaustive at all and they are being changed in each country every day. Social economic development must be conducted in a new format with dynamism, dimensions, flexibility and adaptability to new conditions.

According to the statistics data some directors of the companies complain on employees' lack of foreign languages knowledge and low level of practical skills that don't enable them to systemize theoretical knowledge. Consequently, one should teach future specialists with systematic ways of thinking, wide economic views, reflection etc.

Nowadays the arguable questions in domestic system transferring into international accounting system standards are its methodology, methods and mechanisms. One of the ways to solve this problem according to international standards is to pay attention to staff recruiting, considering specialists’ education, which is expected to embrace the courses of human sciences, cycles of professional disciplines etc. Ukrainian methodology of financial accounting is highly-developed and based on the principals of international standards. Although one should mention that sometimes the usage of the European accounting standards can be vague and doubted at some enterprises, which don’t enter the Stock Exchange and they don’t usually make any financial reports. Any specialist may face difficulties while deciding which financial accounting method to use.

The quality level of specialists’ preparation depends on teachers’ staff and there are some important criteria:

– teacher with Ph. D. or Doctor of Science;
– highly-qualified accountants who sometimes may join studying process;
– participation of accountants in international seminars, conferences, etc.

Today we can notice scarcity in government financial support given to higher educational establishments. It leads to some problems such as:

– literature can’t be presented in full variety at the Ukrainian market;
– informative level of some text-books is not always satisfactory and high (defaults in translation and interpreting of the terminology);
– not many scientists are involved in active work of organizations, who could be responsible for creating accounting standards and regulations;
– explanations in periodicals can be vague and questionable.

These factors should make us think how to cope with these problems.

So, studying process in preparation of specialists in “Accounting and Audit” in higher educational establishments is not fully provided with info resources, which would give all spectrum of nuances of international accounting principals and standards. We believe that it has been caused by rapidly developing economy, which requires deep understanding of venture activity, business and the whole accounting system. The later must take into consideration demands of normative base (accounting and tax), entrepreneurs’ needs and international standards.

In legislative sphere there are still many gaps and open questions. The law accepted in Ukraine in 2004 “Concerning the general state program of adaptation of Ukrainian legislation to the European Union legislation” and accounting was defined as one of the prior spheres, which implies legislation adaptation of Ukraine. In recommendations, prepared by the Worlds Bank specialists in 2008 experts say that Ukraine still has problems in staff preparation. There is a definite lack of highly-qualified auditors and accountants in growing market.

Nowadays an accountant must keep constant studying following the conception of non-stop education. We think that international programs such as CAP and CIPA give us great opportunities to utilize this idea and intentions. These programs help to study innovative principals and put them into practice as the result. The program of these courses is aimed at knowledge checking but not at profound studying and they also don’t give enough practical experience.

In Ukraine we are thinking of establishing the system of constant studying and improving skills of accountants and auditors, which would correspond to the standards of International Accountants Federation. The aim of establishing of this system is to form the European level of accountant qualifications. One should pay attention to two components of staff preparation:

1. getting preliminary Bachelor’s Degree at the university;
2. post-graduations is viewed as the dominant in professional accounting organizations.

For further education development in Ukraine we have to adjust the legislative basis of the country, find opportunities for students training in foreign countries, finance different projects and programs of such kind.

Ukraine successfully collaborates with the World Bank, International Currency Fund, European Bank of Reconstruction and Development.

Collaboration of several universities in staff preparation enables to make it more efficient therefore it is really necessary to create and develop international projects aimed at experience exchange, increasing skills and knowledge gaining for both students and teachers.

Thus, a problem still needs to be solved: to find the most efficient way to combine the positive features of domestic educational system without definite defaults with the innovations of foreign education experience. To fulfill this task will enable Ukrainian higher education to prepare professionals of international level in accounting specialist.


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