UCU is expanding its academic menu for the 2017/2018 school year. One of the new items is the bachelor’s program Ethics-Politics-Economics. The program is new for Ukraine and unique in Eastern Europe, but in the European and American experience there are a whole number of similar programs successfully functioning in Oxford, York, Yale, Pennsylvania, and Prague universities. At the basis of most of them is the Oxford model of 1924, Philosophy-Politics-Economics.

Even 20 to 30 years ago to acquire professional training meant that in the next 50 years you would have a source of income and the possibility to develop professionally in your field. Today, entering the 21^st century, higher educational institutions cannot offer such prospects to their students.

“We want to prepare our young people for the future and help form in them the new competencies of a person of the 21^st century, in particular: the ability to think, to communicate, and to be oriented in situations that are changing,” explains the Dean of UCU’s Social Sciences Faculty, Volodymyr Turchynovskyy. “The program Ethics-Politics-Economics is one of the best opportunities in Ukraine to feel that you are a person who knows, who is capable, who can study new trends, models, concepts and, as a result, can initiate innovative decisions and not simply take part in activities all too easy to copy.”

The head of the program, Yuriy Pidlisnyi, explains that, before starting, they presented the program to potential employers, whom they asked what ourstudent should know and know how to do in order to be interesting to a future employer.

“Practically all employers say that students should have basic knowledge, be ready to learn, be flexible for various changes, and also know how to adapt to new conditions and create their own conditions. From the representatives of various analytical centers in Kyiv, we heard that the program Ethics-Politics-Economics that we are offering will lead students to create niches and structures. Consequently, for success in this area, managerial skills are also necessary. And so we added a number of managerial courses to the program for the later years of study,” explained Yuriy Pidlisnyi.

 Among the particularities of studying in the program Ethics-Politics-Economics:

• an integrated approach to the study of ethics, politics, and economics
• learning through experience: an indivisible union of theory and practice
• recruiting Ukrainian and foreign practicing experts to the program
• internships in partner programs in Ukraine and abroad
• foreign teachers from universities in Europe and America
• part of the instructional program offered in the English language
• a value-based approach to the study of sociopolitical and economic processes

Applicants need to take the ZNO in the Ukrainian language, a foreign language, and there is also a choice of history or mathematics. An additional plus for potential students will be previous experience in civic life, participation in civic organizations or youth initiatives.

Unique to the program is UCU as a base. “On the one hand, the world today is globalizing, but on the other hand, terrible atomization is happening. And there are many cracks in this postmodern culture which is composed of a collage and does not always create something integrated. The program Ethics-Politics-Economics, offered at a Catholic university in Ukraine, suggests that the student synthesize and have a comprehensive view, worldview, and strategy for fruitful work throughout his life,” emphasizes Bishop Borys Gudziak.