The thesis provides a holistic analysis of the issues concerning professional training of petroleum engineering specialists at Ukrainian technical universities in the late 20th/early 21st century, considers Ukrainian and international research related to the education of petroleum engineering specialists, reveals the impact of the world globalization and European integration on the development of higher technical education for oil and gas sphere. The thesis paper carries out the retrospective analysis of the development of higher professional education for the oil and gas industries and conducts comparative analysis regarding solving such issues in technical universities of different countries, in particular, Austria, Great Britain, Germany, France, and the USA; summarizes the results of the studies in five highly developed countries, and identifies progressive and constructive ideas of the international experience.
The rationale behind the theoretical framework for professional training of petroleum engineering specialists is established that encompasses three underlying theory blocks, namely, the essentials of tertiary pedagogy, engineering pedagogy and higher education pedagogy as subdisciplines of pedagogical science; the key ideas and progressive concepts of the CDIO Initiative; interdisciplinarity as a didactic basis for training petroleum engineering specialists and other assumptions related to the professional education of petroleum engineering specialists-to-be. Main trends in the professional training of petroleum engineering specialists at Ukrainian technical universities in the period under study are identified, based on the analysis of educational programs and curricula. Furthermore, a reasonably accurate forecast on higher education development in petroleum engineering specialists in Ukraine is produced, resulting from the thorough analysis of the dynamics of changes in the European and national petroleum engineering labour markets.
We highlight that in training petroleum engineering professionals, it is essential to apply the proactive approach that involves employing innovative Ukrainian and international science and technology advancements, in particular, cutting-edge technologies, which, though presently extensively used in Western Europe, the USA, and Canada, are still to be adopted in Ukraine.
We see the proactive approach as incorporating cutting-edge technologies into the professional training of petroleum engineering specialists-to-be. They are such as smart oil and gas technologies and artificial intelligence, an advanced trend, for improving the safety of drilling and oil-and-gas-field operation on oil and gas platforms, as well as machine learning and data analysis for modelling potential outcomes from new development and assessing environmental risks of a development project prior to its implementation. The smart technologies for oil and gas industry involve installing sensors and telemetry, data collecting and evaluating before it is possible to optimize drilling and production processes, reduce costs, increase safety and resilience. Petroleum engineering professionals must be qualified to operate fully digitized platforms, rigs, wells and storage facilities for monitoring, modelling and analysis. The proactive approach also claims developing new forms of social partnership between the corresponding university and business. Besides, the concept of how to train and prepare petroleum engineering specialists-to-be to international research was worked out, developing their professional foreign language competence included. Furthermore, the methodology for the lifelong professional development of technical personnel of the oil and gas sphere was found out. At the same time, corporate culture is considered essential for training competitive specialists for the oil and gas industry. A training manual on international professional communication of petroleum engineering specialists and instructional guidelines on adopting constructive ideas of the related international experience at technical universities of Ukraine were worked out.
