Nobody wants to spend a lot of time studying nowadays. 12 years at school, 4-6 years in university, and then another 5-10 years to arrive at a somewhat acceptable result and have a desired career progress. Then, out of the blue, you are 30-35 years of age.
What upsets the most is that sooner or later you will come to accept the fact that the attendance mode and speciality chosen, in most cases, gave only the basic knowledge and certainly not the practical one, nor did they allow you to land an awesome job or arrive at the much-desired result that you so excitingly had flagged on your map of aspirations and the future.

And when you find out that you could have combined studying with the hands-on experience and enjoyed a much better result, whilst having the same job at an awesome company as early as at the age of 22… You scratch your head and wonder: “How have I wasted so many years?!”.

Germany is one of the first European states to realise the benefits of combining the studies and the job – when a university student devotes some time to lectures and the rest (most of the time) is allocated to gaining professional experience at a company. In doing so, the German educational system has achieved the lowest youth unemployment rate in Europe.

Nowadays, dual education is a Europe-wide trend: nearly 40-50% of young people in Austria, Switzerland and Denmark study under this system. In neighbouring Poland, dual education is only gaining popularity among Polish educational establishments (mainly in technical universities).

In Ukraine, this trend is right around the corner. Modern high school students have a clear understanding of what exactly do they want to do and first they decide to try if this kind of job suits them. Then they chose an academic specialisation by reference to their interests, talent and the field that gives them joy.

There are also students who leave their university a year later, because they understand that a side job gave them more skills and knowledge than the bench warming at the university.

This does not mean, however, that it is better not to get a degree at all. It just means that one should not spend too much time on something that he or she is not sure about, brings zero joy and loads up with irrelevant information. It would be cool to study immediately after school, precisely because it is really in demand in the market. It carries value, development, brings pleasure and thus money.

And it is very often that you meet a contemporary 22-24 of age, who has just graduated from high school and does not know where to go and what to do due to the lack of subject-matter knowledge and experience. It is sad, but there are thousands of people like him/her. Meanwhile, you are a leading specialist as early as at the age of 24, you earn money, travel a lot, are on the lookout for the biggest players in the market, have some interesting and useful knowledge, plenty of friends and understanding of how the business and economy works and so forth. And in the future, in a couple of years, you can safely become a financial director in a large company or start your own business.

Having recognised the role of business in shaping the modern labour market and analysing the global trends in vocational education for young people, we can conclude that dual education is an effective tool for the development of professionals in a particular field.

Everything is balanced, because the programme is designed directly by the participants of leading educational establishments with the involvement of representatives from medium and large businesses. They know exactly who to look for, what kind of challenges are waiting on the future specialist and how to prepare for them.

We are not the first to launch this type of education in Ukraine, but we, together with the Kyiv National Economic University and partners, are the first to develop and implement a dual education programme in the advisory, accounting and audit market. One year was devoted to prepare and design the model and educational programmes, approve them at the Ministry level and recruit volunteers on a competitive basis.

The programme started on 1 September 2019. Phase II – KNEU-based lectures involving both the independent qualified experts with hands-on experience and experienced specialists from Baker Tilly.

10 February 2020 marked Phase II – first-year students majoring in “Finance” are already taking on the role of “employees”, have met our team and together with their mentors have begun plunging into the real world of business, saving the political science and philosophy for later.

To that note, new employees have the opportunity to participate in all internal events of the company, attend sports events, join our social initiatives within the Corporate Social Responsibility, communicate with business representatives, attend exciting and productive trainings and lectures, learn foreign languages and develop professionally, as well as to spend spare time with friends, travel and relax.

“Everything is developing rapidly nowadays, children get the information and knowledge faster, they want to kickstart their professional career and achieve things as soon as possible. Many of them believe that 5 years at the university will not be spent effectively enough as far as their personal growth. Indeed, it is most likely they will gain the knowledge. However, their development in terms of finding their place in life will pause for the time being. That said, many children, who get a degree without hands-on experience, realise upon graduation that they have learned not what they truly intended.

That is why we are launching a process for parallel acquisition of knowledge and life experience within our company. This will help children to find themselves faster, figure out and realise what to strive for in life. That is our goal within the Dual Education Programme: even before employees form perception boundaries shaped by education, they get into the professional environment and can see how everything works, understand the relationship between what they were taught and what they are doing. And then make an informed choice in terms of how and where to develop themselves”, – summed up Alexander Pochkun, Managing Partner at Baker Tilly in Ukraine.

Work, Study & Fun can be realistically achieved without the detriment to any of these areas.

You only need to start!

We will keep you updated about the progress of this programme, meet with its participants, look into all potential zones of turbulence and the victories achieved!

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