This research focuses on revealing the role of culture of education in shaping students' and teachers' attitudes to the learning process, which is largely determined by the political and social context in which it takes place. This exploration of the cultural nature of autonomy of the Ukrainian university students majoring in translation from English gives insights into the basic principles of Ukrainian pedagogy in a diachronic perspective, and examines students' capacity to manage their own learning, as well as teachers' skills for enhancing learner autonomy among their students. This article's comparative analysis of data provided by students in different years of study helps both to trace changes in learners' attitude to their educational processes and the degree of their awareness of learning objectives, and to set guidelines for building learner autonomy in the context of the Ukrainian higher education system since its independence in 1991.