“This is more Russia than Ukraine”: Milovanov sharply criticizes culture in Ukrainian universities
29 December 2025 20:38
The President of the Kyiv School of Economics, Tymofiy Mylovanov, said that the outflow of Ukrainian youth abroad starts even before entering higher education institutions, at the school level. Talented teenagers are already planning to study in the EU because of distrust in the quality of Ukrainian universities, their conditions, and the “old culture” of management. He said this on the "Komersant Ukrainian" YouTube channel.
According to him, a significant number of gifted students are focused on leaving before graduation, as they do not see universities with really high-quality education in Ukraine.
“We lose students when they are still at school. If you talk to talented students, they want to go abroad because they believe that there are no universities in Ukraine where they can get a quality education,” he said.
Milovanov also harshly criticized the infrastructure and atmosphere in many Ukrainian universities, which, in his opinion, repel applicants from the first minutes of their stay.
“If they walk into most universities, they’ll have a look at them. The toilets are unclean, there’s a stench, it’s cold in winter, and the professor demands that you obey him. There is a separate rector’s elevator. It’s more like Russia than Ukraine,” he says.
According to Milovanov, the key to stopping educational migration is a radical change of culture within universities.
The KSE president also emphasized that the problem is not only the lack of budget funding, but also the unwillingness of university leaders to work with donors and seek resources.
“We have zero state money at KSE, and that’s okay – we find resources. I do not stop working to raise funds for KSE. Do you think that the directors of today’s universities are doing this? No, I don’t. They are the carriers of the old culture,” Milovanov summarized.
