Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 4 – Higher Education in Russia is now in a state of “systemic crisis,” according to Rostov sociologist Vitaly Kovalyov, with the state caring only about numbers and failing to come up with a new plan, students increasingly convinced they’ll get degrees without working very hard, and professors outraged by the decay around them.
In a new article in Science, Culture, Society, the professor at the Southern Federal University notes that Moscow keeps pushing off the date for the introduction of some replacement of the Bologna system and seems to care only about retention and graduation rates (journal-scs.ru/index.php/scs/article/view/UFFHNM discussed at nakanune.ru/articles/124859/).
Kovalyov interviewed students and faculty at a number of higher educational institutions and found that the former felt that they couldn’t be expelled lest the institution’s numbers would look bad and the latter that this was forcing universities to view students as “customers” above all else.
Half of the teaching staff told him that they have “lost their freedom” in making decisions and just under a third (31 percent) said the quality of staff was declining as a result. According to Kovalyov, the more qualified the professors, the more intensely such feelings were held.
Only if the government recognizes that it needs highly skilled professionals and changes its educational model, the sociologist concludes, will Russia get the people it needs to ensure that its economy will grow and the country will prosper. Just putting up rosy statistics as now isn’t going to work.
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