The research aims to define the scope and challenges of intellectual property rights protection in higher schools of Ukraine and offer recommendations to address those for higher education officials and university leaders. The findings of the research rely on the results of an anonymous expert survey conducted among non-law students of two institutions of higher education using a specially designed questionnaire. They reveal a significantly low level of students’ awareness and knowledge of intellectual property rights, academic integrity, and protection thereof, which undermines the internal education quality. At the same time, there exists a high demand for receiving the relevant knowledge within the university programmes the students are enrolled in. It, therefore, seems expedient to design and include “Intellectual Property and Academic Integrity” as a subject in the curricula of higher educational institutions of Ukraine to be taught at the first year of training, and develop a special course in the fundamentals of intellectual property and academic writing to build the students’ relevant competences. Similarly, it is essential that the teaching staff should be trained accordingly and have the relevant powers and tools to impart and enforce academic integrity rights protection.
The paper substantiates the need and importance of cultivation of a competence in intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in the teaching staff in higher education during their qualification enhancement (QE) as a condition for their further development and provision of quality higher education in Ukraine. The survey was conducted under the state-funded R&D topic to evaluate the attitude to intellectual property among the teaching staff of institutions of higher education (IHE). It looks into the factors and mechanisms of IPR protection and inclusion in the QE programmes for the IHE teaching staff. Knowledge in IPR protection encourages creation of a favourable environment for intellectual activity development, where an important role in its dissemination belongs to the teaching staff. The findings reveal that acquisition of such knowledge and skills is currently not commonly included in the corresponding QE programmes, while the number of those interested in them is significant. Another red flag in this regard is overbureaucratization of the process and the working overload of the teaching staff. Therefore, changes are in order in the QE programmes to include the relevant portion of knowledge and training in IPR, their exercise, protection, and commercialization.
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