Sviatlana Matskevich: Belarus witnesses inertness of getting higher education

We have stuck in the 90s – nobody offers us basically any new educational services. University entrants are disoriented and have false idea about the higher education.

Admission to free education in state universities has ended on July 15. Some of the departments in the Belarusan State University have gathered queues of entrants. The admission commission noted that engineer and technical professions were extremely popular. Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics (BSUIR) is still popular; however, rates of Belarusian National Technical University (BNTU) and Belarusan State technological University (BSTU) have also risen.

As the “EuroBelarus” Information Service informed, the dream of the university entrant-2014 was to become a developer in order to leave for the US or Europe as shown by the survey. And these are the answers of the best representatives in the inert crowd of failed admission campaigns.

Will the plans of these respondents be changed after Belarus’ entrance to the Bologna process? Where and why is the car named “higher education” is moving now?

Sviatlana Matskevich, an expert of the Agency of Humanitarian Technologies, the candidate of pedagogical sciences, talked about the admission process, about European and home education trends, and about the orienteers for our higher education system.

- If you were a school graduate now, would you consider applying to some university and what for?

- It is hard to imagine myself a university entrant (laughs)… I already had a situation when my daughter was entering the university – back then we could consider variants. Now, I think, a university entrant is disoriented and finds hard time in choosing variants. It is also hard to say whether it is an entrant who is choosing or his or her parents who have wrong image about the higher education, thinking that this is profession, though this is not completely true.

And since professional orientation in schools is our poor side, few entrants think about some bigger prospects and future career.

Now those university entrants who have high aspirations are having particularly hard times with orientation at the existing field of educational services. Ordinary entrants who just want to get profession and stability in life don’t care where to go – any university in Belarus gives this stability.

The other thing is that market conditions are changing with time, though no university opens big prospects and development trends for university entrants. And if a university entrant dreams of something bigger his views are most likely to be turned outside Belarus.

- Should Belarus admit students to unpopular professions so that to somehow fill in vacancies with low salaries?

- This is how it is being done today; artificially – in a centralized and purposeful way so that to regulate demand for the appearing “gaps” at the labor market. For that certain preferential terms for admission are established.

However, we shouldn’t blame control system for that, but rather give recommendations about principal change of tactics and strategy for regulating the relations between the labor market and education.

- Thus, our system of higher education is clearly oriented at the Belarusan economy, not at satisfying the demands of population, isn’t it?

- It is rather so – we have a state planning system, and that is normal. The other thing is that starting from the 90s this system has been facing failures and state structures had to take into consideration the existing demand for educational services on the part of population, fashion, and market conditions. This factor influences the dynamics of admission.

One more factor is demand on the part of employers. I think that this demand is very different in the state and private sectors for certain qualification.

There are also differences between the demand on the part the state and employers and on the part of entrants and their parents. The golden mean depends on the art of projecting educational services; but nobody is doing that in our country.

- In your opinion, what professions are in demand in Belarus?

- It is hard to tell. Some time ago we faced excess of economists, accountants, and lawyers; though I think that Belarus strongly needs top-class managers – intellectual part of management – good lawyers and good economists, too.

So the question lies not in the number of specialists but rather in their professionalism. If we consider it from the point of view of Belarus’ development and dynamics of professional market conditions we should think about the quality of education in the first place.

If we face some need of non-standard approach in a number of spheres – legal proceedings, management, medicine, agriculture, and others, it turns out that it is very hard to find good professionals.

- Are there any European trends for university entrants that our universities ignore during admission campaigns?

- I wouldn’t say that there is some common sustainable European trend. Each country has different trends and is oriented at different factors that come from different social agents.

The other thing is that European universities and their management are seriously working in terms of projecting, forecasting, and modeling new educational services of both humanitarian and technical type. With such multiplicity of educational offers university entrant can choose what he or she needs.

Whereas in Belarus we see that for a long time nobody has been offering us any new educational services, market situation with professions and schools has remained the same. Little has been changed since the 90s. On the one hand, we have few new directions; on the other – a university entrant is unable to realize his or her self-determination and choose a profession.

Thus, Belarus witnesses inertness of getting higher education; general tendency of getting a higher education is empty and is rather social. Students obviously lack personal self-determination and follow the tastes of social state of affairs in situation of low level of offer of new educational services.

Nevertheless, by September these things somehow bond; so at least technically, everything is all right in Belarus. The problem lies in the content and whether we should develop changes in the system of higher education at all.

I think that with entering the Bologna process Belarus got hope that higher education will start orienting at new methods of management, i.e. use of methods for forecasting, developing, and modeling new professions and new directions of preparation. I.e. it won’t consider the existing situation with economy, but will consider things in perspective and as anticipatory trend instead.

But for now I don’t see the proof of that nether on the part of the state structures nor on the part of employers and consumer of education.

- Did the fact that Belarus has joined European Higher Education Area (EHEA) somehow affect educational processes inside universities?

- No, I don’t see that. By and large, we should start working hard; but I don’t see that we do something – the system seems to be stuck. We have been trying to reach that for a long time; but when we did, we don’t know what to do with it.

Again, demand and offer will bond in the end; the other question is – where and why all this mechanism called “higher education” is moving to?

The mission of higher education shouldn’t orient at satisfying the demands of a university entrant; this is silly. Mission of higher education should be elaborated by people who have power for that; purpose of higher education and what is “high” in this education should be regularly discussed; intellectuals should think about it. Unfortunately, this discourse is somehow wrong, and we have rather switched from meaningful moments in education to market ones – i.e. to the second-order level.

Now I am waiting for something to either be done or not. I think that it is a certain carte blanche for the Ministry of Education, Presidential Administration, and other governmental structures. And this moment of waiting should end after the admission campaign. If after that the universities don’t do anything in terms of content of education it will mean that our forecasts are coming true; and that is going to be sad. We will have to think further whether it is possible to influence this system.