8 September 2014

Representatives of both Minsk and regional universities that provide training for future IT professionals discussed the quality and prospects of IT education during a roundtable meeting Is There IT Education in the Regions? organized in Minsk by the HTP resident-company Itransition.

The participants of the meeting discussed the quality of IT education in regional universities, the relevance of the training programs, jobs for graduates in the regions, distance learning for IT students, trends in migration of specialists within the country. The particular attention was paid to the issue ofthe drain of highly qualified personneland the overall level of univerisity teachers’professionalism.

The event was attended by such universities as Brest State Technical University, Brest State University named after A.Pushkin, Polotsk State University, Belarusian-Russian University (Mogilev), Mogilev State University named after A.Kuleshov, Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics (Minsk), as well as QA Academy training center.

One of the conclusions made during the meeting is that close cooperation between IT companies and universities is needed not only in Minsk, but also in other regions of Belarus. Being employers, the HTP resident-companies should help to expand the curriculum of the regional universities by providing practice-oriented training, opening branches of university departments on the companies’premises, establishing joint laboratories, etc.

Activities with the participation of Belarusian leading technical universities are traditionally held inItransitionatthe beginning of the school year. Having opened offices in Grodno, Mogilev and Polotsk, the company has learned the difficulties faced by regional universities. The aim of the roundtable meeting was to draw attention to these challenges.