You're reading: Multimillionaire building IT school of the future

Multimillionaire Vasyl Khmelnytsky, 50, couldn’t even wait for the construction workers to finish the new IT school that he’s building in the northwest part of Kyiv.

Reflecting the fast pace of the IT industry, Khmelnytsky went ahead and opened the first classroom in the semi-constructed building in August.

Today, 300 applicants are sitting in the large classroom, taking tests to get into the school, with construction work still going on in the building around them.

In two months, the finished school will open as the Unit Factory, an IT school of the future, where there will be no teachers, no books and no admission fees.

Second attempt

Khmelnytsky – a developer, the owner of Kyiv Zhuliany Airport and an ex-lawmaker – wasn’t lucky with his previous IT-related project.

In 2013, he wanted to build Ukraine’s first Silicon Valley-type IT park. The project’s total investment was expected to reach $1 billion, but as constructors started to drive in the first piles, some activist groups took the millionaire to court, accusing him of misappropriating the public land for the IT park.

Khmelnytsky eventually won the case at the beginning of 2016, but the project was dead anyway – it was aimed at foreign companies, some of whom had already lost interest in Ukrainian market after the political crisis of 2014, according to the millionaire.

So Khmelnytsky switched his focus to IT education.

School of the future

He calls his new project, Unit Factory, an IT school of the future. Courses last from one to three years. The school’s free training program is based on gamification, and includes computer game features such as quests, riddles, scores and leveling up.

“The world is changing very fast, like an iPhone,” Khmelnytsky says. “We have to adapt.”

Khmelnytsky promises to invest over Hr 100 million ($4 million) in the school. He thinks that the school will attract the attention of IT companies, which he reckons in about five years will want to rent offices in his premises just to be closer to skilled programmers.

“It isn’t a business where we’re just pouring money down the drain,” he said. The students, he believes, will be an investment in the future.

Three-storey semi-built premises are being prepared to launch Unit Factory’s first classes in November 2016. The building accepted the first applicants to undergo the school’s selection process on Aug. 29. (Volodymyr Petrov)

The problem is, many of the best IT students Ukraine produces are tempted abroad by higher wages and better conditions. In the last three years, around 9,000 IT professionals have left Ukraine. Most of them went to Poland, Germany and the United States.

Khmelnytsky believes that his initiative can encourage more of these talented Ukrainians to stay: students who get a free education at the Unit Factory have to agree to work in Ukraine for at least three years after graduation.

“I hope I will create conditions that won’t differ from those in Silicon Valley,” Khmelnystsky says. “There will be no sense (in moving) – you’ll be able to find a decent job with a decent salary here.”

Political past

Another reason for Khmelnytsky to spend his millions on such schools, he says, is to meet society’s demand for education in a way the traditional universities can’t. He thinks the Ukrainian educational system is flawed because teachers are extremely badly paid.

“Why should a young energetic fellow go and work for Hr 3,000? If it was $1,000, there would be a motivation,” he says.

But Khmelnytsky, a seasoned politician, thinks government is unable to fix the educational system’s flaws, and because of that he won’t go back into politics.

To get into parliament, Khmelnytsky allied with various political forces, including those of both Yulia Tymoshenko and her political foe, ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. He says people still become lawmakers just to achieve their business goals.

“I was in politics, but only indirectly,” he claims. “I wasn’t a real bandit.”

Instead, Khmelnytsky says he needs to gain more experience of the educational sphere in order to implement effective educational reforms outside of politics.

“And in order to have more experience in this sphere, I need to build my own school,” he adds.

The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by Beetroot, Ciklum and SoftServe. The content is independent of the donors.