“There is a big goal — to create an innovation hub in Ukraine, so that products are created here, and in fact, the foundation for this is education. Yes, we can’t just copy Silicon Valley, but we can create something unique based on our strengths using the best international practices,” — is part of the goal of SET University and its President, Iryna Volnytska.
SET University is a higher education institution that teaches entrepreneurship and technology. It is located in Kyiv, Ukraine, and was launched on the eve of the war. It was not in the plans of the SET team to give up and freeze what they had started, so the university is fully operational. It enrolls students, participates in international programs, invites high-level stakeholders to its programs, promotes a culture of entrepreneurship, launches the most innovative programs, and most importantly, breaks stereotypes of classical higher education.
We spoke with Iryna Volnytska, President of SET University. With a rich background in the IT sector, Iryna is driving the idea of creating an innovation hub in Ukraine. The first step to bringing this idea to life is to grow a new generation of Ukrainian tech talent, which is what SET is doing.
Please tell us about yourself, about your personality. Who are you in everyday life?
In real life, I am actually a very big introvert. Very few people believe me because I’m going to talk about the partnerships we’ve had over the past year, but in fact, since childhood, I’ve always been an introvert. I have a rather long history of searching for meaning, and perhaps it was the university that helped me find this meaning. I’ve spent many years working in IT. I ran a fairly large company, then I consulted startups. At some point, I lost my purpose, which made me leave everything behind and go to Myanmar. I lived there for six months in a Buddhist monastery, taught little monks English, and they taught me to meditate. I needed this because I had such a work crisis with self-identity. And then, after returning, the SET University project magically appeared.
How did the idea of creating a university magically appear?
When I returned from Myanmar, I wanted to do impact projects like this one. Our current co-founders contacted me and told me about the idea of a new university. It was supposed to be a truly modern university because education in Ukraine, as a strategic area, has the lots of challenges.
So, the idea was to create a kind of “Stanford in Ukraine.” For me, it sounded like I was being offered to create a corporate academy similar to EPAM or Genesis Academies so that it would be possible to hire great specialists quickly, and that’s it. In the process of shaping the idea and vision, we identified the top priority as creating a full-fledged university that will impact positively education in Ukraine overall.
Stanford became an essential reference, but it had to be in the Ukrainian context. Yes, we can’t replicate Silicon Valley, but we can create something unique, building on our strengths using the best international experience. This is how the idea of creating SET University came about.
What are the ideological pillars of SET University?
There is a great mission to make Ukraine an innovation hub in Europe. And this is possible only through education, as a cornerstone. That is, we want to grow an entrepreneurial mindset at our university. SET University stands for Science, Education, Technology, and we embed each of those tracks into our programs. It’s also important for us to develop critical thinking, because if you have it, and you have the foundation, then students can learn anything in reality.
We don’t just teach technology but also how to build startups. There is a lot of attention to Ukraine now, investors are interested in Ukrainian products but we see a lack of startups and knowledge of how to launch them. Another issue is the willingness to become an entrepreneur. For example, when I ask the audience: “Who wants to create their product, their startup?”, very few people raise their hand. So we need to create this entrepreneurial culture first. This is also one of the goals of SET University. We believe that if we bring the top experts to Ukraine ready to teach about startups and provide opportunities to students, we will be able to gradually create this culture around us, starting with the ecosystem.
If you say that few people are willing to create their product, then what do most people want?
Most people want to go to work for an outsourcing company, earn $5,000, and just work in safety. Because we don’t have that many cases of successful product development in Ukraine. Yes, we have Grammarly, we have a few unicorns, but it’s not enough. Still, 60-70% of the market is outsourced, and, to be honest, it’s quite scary to go and create something of your own. Again, it goes back to the mindset, which again, “thanks” to the Soviet Union, we still need to work on. We don’t have many case studies, entrepreneurship education, or comprehensive acceleration programs. This whole ecosystem needs to be created, and we want to enhance startup culture.
Please tell us about your educational process at the university
We announced the opening of SET University two months before the war started. We were planning to launch bachelor’s and master’s programs in 2022. But when the war started we decided with the team that we wanted to contribute to the victory and respond to the most critical tasks first and foremost. We launched short-term courses on cybersecurity. So that people who lost jobs could get into cybersecurity. We also organized bootcamps for startups that impact Ukraine’s economy.
This year we have already got back to our original plan. We launched two full-fledged master’s programs in cyber defense and computer science. We’ve enrolled 51 students, including CTOs and COOs of startups, the VP of a large Ukrainian outsourcing company, and other tech professionals. Why cybersecurity? Historically, Ukraine has had outstanding expertise in cybersecurity, and we see interest in Ukrainian cybersecurity both from outside and inside the country. And again, there is interest in cybersecurity, and at the same time, we have no Ukrainian cybersecurity products to invest in. That is why we have radically changed the approach to the master’s thesis. Our students have the opportunity to develop startup or technical solutions for their companies as part of their studies. We also have mentors from Silicon Valley and Ukraine who will guide them on their way. Not all of our students will come up with a startup, but at least they will try; they will know how to work in a team, pitch their ideas, and lead their team further.
The second master’s program is Computer Science and Innovation Engineering. This is an interdisciplinary program that combines different technologies: blockchain, artificial intelligence, and cyber defense. As we teach different technologies, of course, there is always a chance to create something fascinating at the intersection of them.
Please tell us about the involvement of students since the beginning of the war
Since we are a fairly small university, we are very agile, student-oriented, and mission-driven. My entire team works like a startup. We know what agile is and how to move fast. That’s why the first course we launched was a cybersecurity course for switchers. We knew there was a problem and we wanted to help Ukraine solve it. We announced it in May 2022, it took us around a month to organize everything. We received 5500 applications in two weeks. It was a solution to Ukraine’s critical problems. We launched only free courses last year. This year, we also have 50% for all scholarships at once, including the ones for cyber forces.
Tell us about your scholarship programs
We have different scholarship programs. To launch a quality class education is very expensive. Our task is to make this education affordable without affecting value, so I work a lot on fundraising, on partnerships. There are international companies that are willing to provide programs and teach for free, but we can’t rely on that as a long-term strategy. We have managed to create a scholarship fund. We have scholarships to cover the full cost of tuition fees, and scholarships to cover 70%-50%. They are mainly focused on the cyber forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and, in general, everyone who is involved in the Armed Forces, veterans and their families. We also provide scholarships to women who want to go into STEM, and people who have specific achievements in technology.
What do approaches to education mean to you?
What makes us stand out among other universities is a very flexible blended format that works well even for full-time professionals, top experts with practical experience as lecturers, entrepreneurship tracks, and a human-oriented approach.
We know that there are challenges in higher education in Ukraine. Even before the war, we had a gap. The Ministry of Digital Transformation did research, that showed that Ukraine has around 30,000 graduates every year, but half of them, which is 15,000 graduates, could not find a job in IT. And we have 50,000 programmers working in the IT sector overall. We’d like to increase this figure.
We want to bridge the gap between the skills required by IT companies and the skills provided by universities. We invite top executives from various IT companies to become our teachers and mentors. For example, in the cybersecurity program, we have an ex-Tesla expert who built their entire insider threat system from scratch. These are the kinds of case studies we want to focus on.
How did you form your team of professors?
We have a drastically diverse teaching team. In Ukraine, there is a huge challenge to find teachers, especially professors. Most of those who used to teach IT, math, or other STEM subjects, left the universities and went to work for IT companies. Lots of scientists either left or started working in IT, earning much more than they could in Ukrainian universities. But there is another interesting part: IT companies and their specialists are still ready to contribute to education because it actually nurtures their future employees. So the teaching staff at SET University is 90% professionals with practical experience working at IT companies, not only Ukrainian but also international. They understand what the market needs now, they face some business challenges themselves and know how to solve them. Of course, we also have a lot of lecturers from other universities from Europe and the US, we involve the international community so that they can share their global experience.
Do you use artificial intelligence in your university’s internal operations?
Some may call artificial intelligence a threat, but it is not a threat to us. On the contrary, we see artificial intelligence as one of the tools that helps us. It’s the same as when the Internet or a calculator got created. It is a question of how to use it. Before ChatGPT came along, we already had a system in place that was difficult for students to hack with ChatGPT. Our education is of workshops, everything in the form of constant iteration with the speaker, and the only thing they can do with ChatGPT is, for example, use it to help something that we do in life. Sometimes we use it to create content, to create a presentation. We even use it for program validation, it helps teachers.
What is the role of AI in educational processes?
We have a rather interesting story with AI. Most of our partners and friends develop or are related to AI-based projects. Those include Reface, AI House, Zibra AI, and Roosh VC, which invests in AI. It allows us to collaborate with some of the best ML and AI engineers on the market. We have integrated some AI and ML modules into master’s programs and are currently conducting market research to plan the next programs.
Can you list the projects SET is working on right now?
We have plenty of projects. We’ve already started working on master’s programs for the next year. We also have micromaster’s programs. This is when a student doesn’t have time for a complete master’s program, but if they are interested in a particular module, it can be a short-term course for a few months, which they can use to solve a particular issue and get very specific knowledge relatively quickly. It is also based on the best business practices. Among the new micromaster’s programs are Solution Architecture, the No-code AI program, and Digital Transformation. We are also working on another project — a global bachelor’s degree program, and it will be a very long one. We will launch it no earlier than in 2 years. Actually, it will contradict the entire education system of Ukraine. Once we do it, it will be a huge international case study.
What are your main challenges?
Frankly, I was told by many people that we would never pass the licensing, never launch the university at all and that it was all very complicated. In fact, it is. If I had known that it was so complicated, I’m not sure I would start doing it. And I think we have many more challenges ahead of us.
We know that Ukraine will win the war, but if we don’t have the right education in place, what kind of future awaits us? Educated people are the drivers of the economy. SET University needs to continue developing relevant educational programs for professionals in Ukraine, needs to attract funding to be able to teach more people. And this is quite a challenging thing to do during the war. But I’m sure we’ll succeed, as well as Ukraine.
