National language policies and English proficiency in Ukrainian academia

Torubara, Oksana (2025) National language policies and English proficiency in Ukrainian academia. European Journal of Language Policy, 17 (2). pp. 255-282. ISSN 1757-6830

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Abstract

The study examines how national language policies in Ukraine shape English proficiency requirements for academics and evaluates whether their current language levels adequately support international research publishing. Through analysis of policy documents, sociological survey data and findings from empirical studies, this paper investigates institutional English-language proficiency requirements and their alignment with researchers’ needs. The results show that while Ukraine has implemented comprehensive policies promoting English in academia, including mandatory B2 level for most academic degrees and positions, the average Ukrainian researcher’s proficiency remains at the A2–B2 level. This gap between policy requirements and actual proficiency levels significantly impacts researchers’ ability to publish internationally. The analysis reveals that even though required B2 proficiency enables basic academic communication, successful research publishing requires C1/C2 level skills for navigating complex international academic discourse. The study argues that the uniform B2 requirement across all academic positions fails to address the varying linguistic demands. The findings also highlight the necessity of developing consistent national English-language proficiency assessment standards and implement more differentiated, discipline-specific language requirements. The research can inform policy revisions entailed by the development of targeted language support programmes. Further research should focus on conducting detailed language needs analyses across academic disciplines, developing domain-specific resources and scaffolding. This would enable institutions to better support Ukrainian scholars in meeting international academic standards and enhance their participation in global scholarly discourse. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/ .