es of the Ukrainian National Republic to organize trade schools with 1- or 2-year programs, and 4- or 5-year professional education programs at universities and institutes. Two new universities were founded—at Kamianets-Podilskyi (Kamianets-Podilskyi Ukrainian State University) and Katerynoslav (see Dnipro National University)—which offered some professional educational programs.
With the establishment of Soviet rule in Ukraine, professional and vocational education was reorganized. In the 1920s the professional school became the standard secondary school, offering 2-, and, later, 3- and 4-year programs. The following types of professional schools existed: industrial-technical, agricultural, socioeconomic, medical, art, artisan-industrial, construction, and transport. Survey data for November 1929 show that there were 678 professional schools in Ukraine, with an enrollment of 88,200 students. The most numerous were agricultural schools (249 schools, with 27,000 students) and industrial-technical schools (157 schools, with 26,000 students). Professional schools were established to train a skilled work force and prepare students for higher education.
Vocational training of skilled industrial workers was conducted in the factory apprenticeship schools. Established in 1920, these schools offered 3- and 4-year programs of technical training and general education to 14- and 15-year-olds who worked in factories and plants, and who had completed four grades of elementary education. In 1929 there were 201 such schools, with 30,000 students. In the 1930s the program of study was reduced to one and a half or two years. Similar schools existed for rural young people who worked on state farms (see Schools for peasant youth).
Higher education was also reorganized. In 1920, universities were abolished and replaced by institutes (agricultural, industrial-technical, socioeconomic, medical, pedagogical, art, and transport) which offered professional education programs that encompassed all facets of production (theory, economics, management, and practical skills). Technical colleges or tekhnikums were established on the basis of former secondary technical schools and Realschulen and were designed to train specialists in narrow, practical technical fields. In 1928 there were 38 institutes, with 33,400 students, and 126 tekhnikums, with 26,900 students.
In 1929 the All-Union Supreme Council of the National Economy ordered all levels of Ukraine’s education system to be reorganized along Russian lines. Whereas in the 1920s Ukrainian had increasingly become the language of instruction in institutions of professional and vocational education, in the 1930s the trend was reversed, in favor of Russian-language instruction. In 1931, tekhnikums were reduced to the status of secondary schools. By 1933 some professional schools had been transformed into schools that offered secondary special education; others had been liquidated.
In 1934 Kharkiv University, Kyiv University, Odesa University, and Dnipropetrovsk University were re-established. Tekhnikums were charged with the preparation of specialists at the intermediate level, and institutions of higher education (institutes and universities) were to offer advanced qualifications. Institutions of higher technical education with a three- or four-year program were organized in larger industrial enterprises. Under the impact of rapid industrialization the number of institutions of higher learning grew from 42 in 1929 to 173 in 1940. The student population increased from 40,900 to 196,800, and most students were trained in narrow, highly specialized technical fields.
With the approach of the Second World War the supply of labor from the tekhnikums and factory apprenticeship schools was deemed insufficient, and in 1940 the Main Administration of the State Labor Reserve was established with its own schools. All vocational training schools below the level of tekhnikums were placed under the jurisdiction of this highly centralized institution. In 1959 the labor reserve schools were transformed into urban and r