What do Students Think about Ukrainian Higher Education in the Conditions of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The article analyzes a number of empirical studies on the modification of educational systems in the world and in Ukraine during the COVID-19 pandemic and the introduction of quarantine restrictions, including the transition to distance learning. A generalization is made about the dispersed non-systematic nature of these studies and their lack of representativeness due to online methods prevalence, their focus on studying the state of education in primary and secondary education etc. The answer to this was the implementation of a comprehensive representative study «How Does the Youth of Ukraine live during COVID-19» where an author of this article participated as an analyst. The article contains a presentation and an interpretation of the youth attitudes, in particular students, to changes in education during the pandemic in April-June 2020. The main trends of evaluative judgments were identified, the individual experience of students in terms of adaptation to new learning conditions was highlighted and their ideas about opportunities in the field were analyzed. It consists in the respondents' statements about the insufficient preparation of the country's higher education system for the new force majeure situation of distance learning, as well as in the unpreparedness of some students for the new educational requirements. The manifestations of social inequality in receiving a quality education by its recipients have been recorded. At the same time, it was emphasized that in Ukraine the negative impact the pandemic on education was the lowest for students since they showed a higher degree of adaptation to new learning conditions. The article contains a number of suggestions to improve the quality of the educational process in case of new COVID-19 outbreaks.