The actual state of things in Belarus’ higher education (Round table with participants of the Bologna Committee), part II

The round table with representatives of the Public Bologna Committee dedicated to the actual state, problems, and directions of reforming higher education in Belarus.

    2. Challenges of the state management of higher education

А.Y. - Let's pass to the next topic. "On June, 24^th, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko accepted Minister of Education Sergei Maskevich with a report", - informs the Press Service of the head of the state. During this meeting, they discuss various questions, including one interesting moment that has to do with the increase of the duration of students’ practice. There’re two problems - tutors ostensibly lag behind life and practice, their knowledge becomes outdated; and on the other hand, it’s necessary to send the students who have studied two-three years, to the plants so that they could smell powder, so that they could practice. And what does it mean for students? Is such practice necessary? Is there a separation of education from the manufacturing process?

D.G. - When I’ve communicated with students, I’ve heard many times that, really, in the preparation system all is theorized very much; there’re many needless subjects; there’s want of practice; students would like to apply their skills in practice. Being based on my own experience, I can say that, really, coming to a plant, conditionally speaking, after a college, you understand that only 50% of what you’ve studied can be used here. But the question is how your study at the university will be coordinated with the training which takes place during your practice. Students who wanted to find practice independently have addressed us many times, and they say, "Our HEIs can’t adequately find practice for students. We’re offered absolutely inadequate places where employers need no probationers". There was a time when these students wanted to create at their universities their own students centers which would search for employers who really need students-probationers. Such initiatives, I think, appear not out of the blue, but because of the understanding that the HEI is incapable to organize students’ practice so that it would satisfy students themselves.

V.D. - What you’re saying, Dmitry, is also a question of the quality of education. It’s absolutely clear that the bureaucratic systems of quality assessment don’t work and that the employer should take part in the educational process more actively somehow. In the West, for a long time already, a student who has no job-related experience can’t find any job after his/her graduation. And in Belarus the agencies demand from those who apply for a job, even from graduates, to have some job-related experience. Therefore, it’s natural that students go to work. And it’s very important both here and in Europe. Naturally, it displeases the academic personnel who believe that it steals their time, their working hours. Certainly, our teachers have considerably lost their hold on reality, life, etc., and they do nothing to change this situation; that’s true. However, you see, during that conversation of the president with the Minister, a surprising thing was said – supposedly, two years of studying will suffice - let them go working to farms and in the fields...

А.Y. - The exact quote is, "It is necessary to transfer the center of gravity to manufacture - fields, farms, factories, plants, and to teach future experts there".

S.M. - Well, it’s such an obvious tendency of transforming HEIs in vocational schools. Here, it’s being fixed. We’ve already said it two years ago - our HEIs are vocational schools, and this tendency’s been voiced officially now.

V.D. – Please, say nothing bad about vocational schools! I will defend them. Vocational schools are remarkable! Let there be vocational schools if there’re really vocational schools. There’s a problem, a very serious one – what’s going to happen next? They need practice? Yes, they do. The monitoring, which is being conducted within the scope of the activity of the Public Bologna Committee and other organizations, reveals absolutely "eminent" examples. For instance, in the town of Horki, 1,000 lawyers and economists were sent to “practice” - to pave the streets in the town that was being prepared for Dažynki [Belarusan Harvest Festival]. And that was called “practical training” for lawyers and economists?! I asked them, "What kind of practical training is that?" - "This is, - they answered, - their practice for the course of ethics and esthetics. Now, before spitting on the pavement, they’ll think first".

А.Y. – Are you kiddin’?! 

D.G. – No, I’m serious.

V.D. – They even shifted the time-table of academic studying so that to send students to such practice. And it’s forced labor, by the definition of the International Labor Organization. It reminds me very much the Turkmen variant. What did they come to during the Türkmenbaşy? Niyazov reformed higher education and reduced it to two years. Two years at the university, and then – go to plants and keep studying there. I suspect that Niyazov could be a source of inspiration for such things here.

S.M. – It is a sad question. As long as I remember, the ratio of practice and theory has been discussed. And never does this discussion, for some reason, reach a serious level. And how’s it possible to discuss this question? It should be done at the level of purposes and orientations of HEIs. And, proceeding already from this, to solve it. But who discusses purposes in our country?

V.D. – I’m categorically against those who say, "Higher education institution? Who needs it?"... There’s no higher education which would be identical or standard one. Now it’s necessary to say that there’re many different types of higher education institutions. There’re no HEIs as such. Let's forget about it.

S.M. - HEIs can be different... The question is what for? And then from such a primitive discussion about the necessity of practice we should lift this discussion up to the level of the mission of the higher education system. If there’s some understanding, it’ll be clear why this practice is necessary. Now, as for practice, there’s a total misunderstanding; what for are there HEIs in this country?

V.D. – Here, there’s a certain reason. First, there’s want of labor force; therefore, it’s necessary to put students to this forced labor.

А.Y. - And the second reason? You’ve already mentioned the attempt to transfer the question of the quality of education and preparation of experts to the shoulders of employers.

V.D. – That’s right, and it’s not news. In the late Soviet period, they also created a similar scheme. They started to create educational-scientific production associations. As Raikin [Arkady Raikin was a Soviet stand-up comedian; creator of a whole array of unforgettable satirical characters, he led the school of Soviet and Russian humorists for about half a century. In the Stalinist police state this was prone to danger, as it was not uncommon to get purged not only for telling a casual joke, but even for not reporting it to the authorities - EuroBelarus] joked, "Forget induction, forget deduction - give us production". The non-conformity of higher education to inquiries of the labor market was noticed in the Soviet period. And when it became clear that graduates of HEIs were not ready to work at factories, it was decided to unite HEIs and manufacture in research-and-production complexes, to professionally train people for manufactures.

А.Y. - Svetlana has been saying for a long time that our higher education is being more and more reduced to preparation. It was comprehended in the industrial epoch, the epoch of a planned economy of the USSR. But now the questions, arising in connection with the global differentiation of labor, demand wide specialists who can adapt quickly the knowledge they received to the manufactures which appear in the changing world. As it seems to me, it’s impossible to prepare an expert for a concrete specialty ‘cause the knowledge becomes outdated.

S.M. It’s a question of purposes. As it turns out, our HEIs do not set such a task as to teach people think, to create some universum of knowledge, which in various situations would allow a person to adapt, to recognize a situation, and to act in it. There’s a tendency to increase preparation.

V.D. – Tell us, please, what percent of the population can be taught this thinking about which you’re speaking?

А.Y. - It isn’t important. The president regularly pays attention to the higher education system and, as I recall, about two years ago he came to his own Academy at his own Administration and said, "Oh, my Gosh! What awful experts! We can’t graduate such executives!" An executive is a person who ought to think at least a little. But, even they aren’t taught this thinking.

V.D. – He said another thing. He proclaimed a certain idea of Utopia. He said that they’ve been supposedly taught something, but still a person who graduates from the Academy of Management should be self-denying, he/she should forget about his/her own personal purposes.

S.M. - Then, it’s not education and not preparation, this is upbringing.

V.D. – That’s right.

D.G. - Preparation of samurai.

V.D. - Yes, samurai. It’s a certain Utopia, “The City of the Sun”.

S.M. – It’s true, neither preparation nor education are now the main things for the educational system. Upbringing is the key process. Upbringing in a broad sense. Therefore, they bring up as they can - through the ideology, by shifting accents...

V.D. - Let's forget about the general model of higher education; there’re many different models. Eventually, we prepare not people for the techniques of the 22^nd century, but we prepare them so that they could work at the Kryčaŭ-based cheese-making factory, inter alia.

А.Y. - No, we prepare them for various things. According to your own model - various education for various things.

V.D. - But for this very purpose, as well. Imagine - huge Russia, 7 million students, and they estimate that every year secondary schools prepares no more than 40,000 people who’re able to study high technologies and to cope with them. You see, some people can be taught and others can’t ‘cause it’s useless.

А.Y. - And there’s no need to teach the others. For someone, cheese-making is both vocation and profession.

V.D. – We need various models, and it’s necessary to admit it.

А.Y. – Alright. Where in Belarus can a person study modern management?

V.D. – We have the uniform standard!

А.Y. - The uniform standard is excellent. Our environmentalists once told me about such a situation – there’s the Kyoto Protocol and Belarus has its quotas based on it, which we don’t use to the full; accordingly, Belarus can sell the extra quotas. But Belarus can’t sell these quotas because the Ministry for Protection of the Environment and Natural Resources has no specialists who can monitor the condition of quotas in Belarus. For several years, they’ve been reporting about this problem to the Ministry level, but still there’re no experts who could approach creatively the solution of this problem.

V.D. - Creativity isn’t needed here. It’s a standard procedure.

А.Y. – It needs adjustment, it isn’t standardized, and each country’s got its specificity. They can’t just give an instruction so that samurai could go and do it. Samurai need to go and think. Where to study how to do it? Nowhere!

V.D. – We shouldn’t set identical tasks for everybody and adjust everyone to one standard as setting the standard today leads to death of the education. You see, actually, there should be many models, and for this purpose we’ve got to have some freedom in this system - academic freedoms, university autonomy, etc. We can’t teach everybody according to one standard.

А.Y. – We’re not saying that either; neither Svetlana says that, nor I do. A share of diversity is important. In Belarus, obviously, there’s a decrease to the level of preparation and even worse - to the level of upbringing. It creates a problem for the country development in the future and even for the solution of the topical problems, as in the example with the Kyoto Protocol.

S.M. - If our higher education system rolls down to such opinions as "everybody must be sent to the fields, farms, etc.", then there’s a question of who’ll prepare the elite? In what place the elite will be prepared?

V.D. – There’s another problem - let them go to farms, fields, etc., but if these farms, fields, and factories had any contemporary technologies!

S.M. – There’s such a concept about anticipating education which assumes that the system of knowledge received during one’s education in an HEI will root in practice and alter this practice. And here we’ve got something absolutely different – the complete elimination of anticipating knowledge. They say – this is our reality and it’s good. And the whole educational system should be arranged according to this underdeveloped reality. We destroy the whole system of higher education in advance by such things.

А.Y. – Let’s pass to the next theme. In the report of the Minister, there’re many more interesting things. In the context of the problems with the price, quality, availability, with the overload of the system with tutors and shortage of students, what does the president’s order to reduce the terms of training for certain specialties in HEIs mean? The Minister, in particular, says, "The Ministry of Education has studied thoroughly the possibilities of reducing the terms of training, and now we come nearer to the transition to the four-year-long education". He says this work is being conducted, and the optimization of the terms of training concerns about 60% of specialties, basically, of an economic, pedagogical, and technical profile. What does it mean?

S.M. It means the economic necessity. 

V.D. – It’s not the news – out of 300 specialties, about 80 have already reduced their terms of education. The problem is another. It’s right that rectors of HEIs don’t want this reduction because it’ll reduce their budgets as it’s always like that. Thus, there is, in my opinion, a dangerous thing when they say, "Well, it’s the Bologna Model!"

S.M. – It means, an action with an absolutely other motivation is presented by them as a very progressive step.

V.D. - The Bologna Model assumes the following step – the master’s degree, which is meanwhile absent in Belarus. It is important, but it doesn’t exist. They’ve begun reducing the terms, but still prepare the same expert. Rubinov used to say that "four-year bachelors" are half-educated people, while our "specialists" are real specialists. Now it turns out that our specialists are half-educated persons. But it’s absurd – it’s not simply oddities in architecture, it’s a welter instead of music. In the Bologna Model, the reduction of terms of training takes place in order to make the first education step mass and the second – elite one, or intended for preparation of highly skilled specialists. While here, the first step is the main one and, as a matter of fact, the only one ‘cause the magistratura [Master's Degree Program in post-Soviet space - EuroBelarus] is, in its essence, a part of the aspirantura [postgraduate education- EuroBelarus], where less than 1% of students study.

А.Y. - In general, there’s no Bologna Process at all here?

V.D. It’s on the contrary – the anti-Bologna Process. And it would be reasonable to say, "Let's, nonetheless, accept this two-step model". Our problem’s always been ignorance and an attempt to create some chimeras. But it’ll be impractical ‘cause it’ll connect the things that can’t be connected. They say, "Well, let it be not four years, but four years and a half!" And what does it mean? That the first step will be almost the same as five-year education. But economically it has no sense, and it doesn’t correspond at all to the Bologna Model. We simply want to make everything in the way so that we’d still have the same "specialist". What for then do we need the magistratura?

А.Y. – What do students think of this reduction of terms? Where will it lead to? Do they perceive it as half-education? Do they want to receive five-year education, or they don’t care?

D.G. - Basically, the students are happy that the terms are being reduced and now they have "to wait for the diploma" not five, but just four years. The sooner you receive the diploma - the sooner you’ll go and learn something maybe somewhere else. Students enter HEIs with certain motivations; they start their education in this system and graduate just with the same knowledge they had before as their motivation is "the sooner - the better", "the less I’m loaded - the less I’m gonna be bored by some political science or the law cuz I’m a technician and a specialist, and what for do I have to understand what the Constitution is?", "The more I work - the more money I’ll receive". Trivial, down-to-earth, practical things - basically, everything’s moving thanks to them. In Belarus, there’re fewer and fewer such people, such students, who go studying and really want to receive knowledge. It’s interesting how this campaign will affect the number of those who will leave abroad? Due to the fact that it’s expensive to study in Belarus, that there’re such problems in the economy, and that in Belarus prospects aren’t bright, many people face the dilemma - to live here or not to live. I’ve got a slew of acquaintances who, having graduated from a secondary school or HEI, make a decision to leave the country and to study abroad.

А.Y. – It means, even out of these 60,000 graduates, there’s a part of those who try to leave to study abroad?

V.D. – Well, it’s quite problematic to leave for study right after school ‘cause we lack one additional year of education that doesn’t allow us to start university education in the majority of foreign countries. It’s better to receive this year here, i.e. to study one year in an HEI and then to get away from here. Therefore, if people think about their life seriously, they enter a university so that to study here for a year and then to leave abroad. Having refused from the twelve-year secondary school, we’ve created a barrier for mobility like in Turkmenistan. If in Turkmenistan there’s nine-year secondary education, where can a person with this nine-year education go from Turkmenistan? Nowhere. He or she will stay there ‘cause he or she will have to finish his or her education. In the same way, having studied for two years in the higher education program, they’ll not go anywhere – they’re not experts, not bachelors; they’re nobody. It’s possible to create such a barrier to prevent the "brain drain", to hamper mobility. Belarus has created such a barrier by having refused from twelve-year education. There’s such a problem, but again – we absolutize and exaggerate the role of higher education.

It seems to me there’s a general crisis of higher education in the modern world, which concerns Belarus, as well. And there exists the desire to pass these four years as fast as possible because four years is some initiation ceremony, after which people receive the higher education diploma. What do they need this diploma for? The only function of higher education, which remains everywhere invariably, is a distribution of social statuses, which is guaranteed by the state. In Belarus, even the diploma issued by private HEIs is of the state sample. The state does everything to keep the distribution of social statuses under its control.

S.M. – You mean, by and large, that it doesn’t matter how many years it’s necessary to study - four, five, etc., if the function itself doesn’t work.

V.D. - It does work ‘cause statuses are being distributed.

А.Y. – Here, it’s interesting to compare the distribution of social statuses and its correlation with the mass character of higher education. Higher education becomes wide-spread. I understand the distribution of statuses when higher education is limited and, in some sense, "not for all", then it obviously creates elitism and educational gradation. But if it has a mass character, how’s it solved?

S.M. - It just seems to me that it’s not like that, that the educational system doesn’t carry out this function either. It doesn’t give these social statuses. In the conditions of a mass character, all these social statuses disappear. Actually, the process of receiving diplomas is being formalized. I mean, it’s enough to receive a diploma, and social statuses start to be distributed after that - after a higher education establishment - through a competition for working places, etc. A diploma is the minimal entrance qualification; that’s why a person must pass the study term in an HEI with a feeling of sad hopelessness.

Therefore, when there’re such questions and formalization, our appeals that it’s impossible to consider the reduction of the terms of training out of the context of the contents of education look rather silly. And here is where all the horror of the situation lies, because we consider the technological questions, which are actually formal ones, - diploma reception, and quantitative aspects. And we’ve completely ceased discussing the questions of the contents of education.

А.Y. - During the meeting of the president and the Minister, they mentioned the contents of education, as well. Lukashenko thinks that HEIs have possibilities to optimize the educational process - for example, some subjects aren’t necessary at all and they need to be eliminated. The president, on the one hand, speaks about it. And, on the other hand, he corrects himself - here it’s dangerous to "be tightened" – there’ll be doctors who don’t know history, but they ought to be citizens, as well. What does it mean? The authorities will continue their policy of reducing humanitarian specialties and replacing them with their courses à la "The Great Patriotic War" or the course "The Ideology of the Belarusan State"? What does it mean for the contents of education?

S.M. - It seems to me it’s huge nonsense - to discuss the contents of education in the context of the subjects which are introduced ‘cause in a HEI the real carrier of the contents of education is the academician. After all, what’s the content of education in a HEI? The activity of the academician. If there’s a school of sciences, there’s such an academician whom it’s possible to be guided by - then we say, "Yes, there’s the contents of education. The university does exist". When we start to discuss it through subjects, we turn universities into secondary schools. We try to introduce the standard and formally approach the question of the contents of education. By and large, nowadays, it doesn’t matter what subjects they have. The question, more likely, is who and how will teach them. And it’s possible to alter the curriculum in any way; it’s possible to remove philosophy and to insert the history of the Great Patriotic War.

V.D. – There won’t be any difference.

А.Y. – It means, if we have an academician, the activity of the academician, and the academic community, it’s possible to make the course about the Great Patriotic War substantial and to teach it in the right way. 

V.D. - What are we talking about when we have mass higher education? What academicians – to teach about the Great Patriotic War?

S.M. - Vladimir Aleksandrovich, you somehow always lose the modality. What was our modality? Theoretical; how it should be. And you’re speaking of what we have now. 

V.D. – Why do we have to speak of what could be?

S.M. – Being based on what there should be, it’s possible to assess what we have now.

Pass to the part I | Pass to the part III