Vladimir Dunaev: The society should raise a request to transform the higher education

The call for modernization, even coming from the national elite,is fraught with the risk of humiliation of the nation,implying recognition of its backwardness and even shamefulness of traditional life

It is even more difficult to reconcile with such a call, if it is heard from the outside.

In contrast to the reformation, modernization implies a shocking realization of a gap between the modernity and the past and the crisis of civilizational identity. Government is ready to speculate in such moods while revolutionary withdrawal periods, but not in periods of stability or stagnation.

No wonder that the Belarusan regime has turned a cold shoulder to the European dialogue on modernization with Belarusan society. The Belarusan authorities don’t notice nothing out-of-date, and rather, nothing shameful around them. Therefore, they are not going to go on to the radical changes in the political, economic and social life.

But if the overall progress is unlikely, then in some areas, it is impossible to exclude the possibility of positive change. These loci of change should include the higher education system. In the context of the modernization dialogue in the higher education reform sphere, Europe links prospects of people-to-people contacts as an important tool for strengthening mutual trust and cooperation between people.

Convergence of the Belarusan higher school with the standards and practices of the Bologna process is to create the preconditions for intensification of international academic cooperation, enlargement of student exchanges and mobility of teachers and researchers. But not just for the sake of openness to the world there is need to modernize the higher education.

The need for change in higher education is felt by almost all the groups of Belarusan society. Even the authorities are unhappy with the higher education low efficiency. Accession to the Bologna process could offer an incentive to a real modernization of the Belarusan higher education.

In 2011, the Belarusan Ministry of Education made an unsuccessful attempt to join the Bologna process. But due to the unwillingness of the Belarusan authorities to go for the real closeness with the values, goals and the key policy issues of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the issue of accession of Belarus has been postponed to a later time.

Deferred admission of Belarus to the EHEA gives a time lag of about three years for the higher education reform. Until the next summit in 2015, one can’t launch and fully complete the reform, but it is possible to reach a national consensus on the vector of change and the Belarusan higher education development program.

However, without active public participation in the discussion of the reforms’ program and its implementation, as well as the external pressure on the government from the European, primarily Bologna structures, the Belarusan Ministry of Education will not go on major changes.

Of course, there may be different scenarios in Belarus. One can’t exclude a rollback or conservation of the status quo for some time, but the accumulation of economic problems in higher education and the need to harmonize the rules in the educational market of the Common Economic Space will force Belarusan authorities to go out on a limb to find a compromise with the Bologna requirements.

At this point, the public and the authorities should be presented sound, clear and detailed vision of the necessary reforms. It is necessary to realize that in the years following the signing of the Bologna Declaration in 1999, the Belarusan high school has ever more drifted away, in its particular way, from the European development vector.

The analysis of the readiness of our high school to join the Bologna process has shown that we are now further away from Europe than back in 2004, when the internationalization of our education process was interrupted, which had begun two years earlier. In 2004, the process of rapprochement with Europe was opposed by the process of self-isolation of the Belarusan higher education and the back-off to the Soviet model, with its long educational cycle and ideological control of the content of education and the political instrumentalization of the high school.

This policy was institutionalized in the Higher Education Act, adopted on July 11, 2007. In addition to other important articles on the process of higher education internationalization, the text of the document was deprived of articles on academic freedom and university autonomy. The Education Code, which came to power in 2011, continues the same line. The Education Code of the Republic of Belarus, which came into force in 2011, still bends the line.

The whole philosophy of the Education Code is not in line with the European education traditions, pointing to a different vector of the higher education development.

In the documents of the Bologna process there has been repeatedly reiterated that any European education reforms are possible only on the basis of the traditional values of university autonomy and academic freedom. Countries that aspire to join the Bologna Declaration, are to respect these imperatives not only as a historical privilege, but above all, because these are based on the responsibility of universities to society.

The very society should be interested in the fact that the university freedoms of thought, opinion, expression, association, movement and education never limited. In most countries, these rights are guaranteed by the constitution and special laws are regarded as the condition of normal functioning of higher education institutions for interests of social development. The Belarusan legislation does not guarantee these freedoms neither academic staff nor students.

As in the Soviet time, the Education Code does not even make advance to draw the education out from the sphere of administrative power relations to the recognition of the autonomous, independent status of educational process subjects.

The Education Code section, devoted to higher education, denies the university community any instruments of influence on the institution management and demonstrates the commitment of the legislator to transform the structure of the universities into the state apparatus’ structures. University rectors, who own all the plenitude of the power in the institution and who are chairmen of boards of universities by law, while not being elected by very boards or the high school boards and are not accountable to the academic community.

Absence of the real university autonomy facilitates instrumentalization of universities for political purposes, including for the purposes of prosecuting government opponents and dissidents. University administrations are forced to serve the political interests of the government: to compel students to vote early, to exclude peaceful protesters and opposition groups’ participants, exercise political control of student government, etc.

Proposal of the Bologna Secretariat to defer the accession of Belarus to the EHEA was due, above all, to this clear conflict of the European and Belarusan official academic values. All the other differences in the architecture and policies of the higher education derive from this conflict of values. But, despite the very clear and unambiguous message of the Bologna Secretariat, addressed to the Belarusan Ministry of Education, the authorities are not ready yet to admit that it is exactly a conflict of values that is a major obstacle to the country's accession to the Bologna Process.

Such a confession is very painful for the Belarusan Ministry of Education, because it leaves no hope to limit itself by technical improvements for the accession to the EHEA. The changes will have to address the fundamental objectives of the Belarusan higher education system. Only an open public discussion could prompt officials to discuss the program of reforms that can really bring the Belarusan High School closer to the European Higher Education Area.

The call of the Bologna Secretariat to ensure observance of institutional autonomy, academic freedom and public participation autonomy in Belarusan universities in the processes of higher education management is not only the requirement to deliver high school on administrative arbitrariness, centralization and political instrumentalization, but also the opportunity to switch the Belarusan higher education from the purposes of political control over students and teachers on the task of ensuring a decent quality of education. This means the real modernization of higher education, since it changes its purpose and fundamental imperatives, not just architecture.

As part of the dialogue on modernization it is possible not only to stimulate discussion on the reform of the Belarusan higher education, but also to propose a mechanism involving a wide range of social partners of higher education in its updating.

To hear the voice of the public, it is necessary that a distinct request was formed in the environment of the higher education real stakeholders (students, parents, employers, teachers) for reforms as well as public participation in their implementation.

Therefore, a public dialogue should precede the dialogue between the society and the authorities. Only in this case, the requirement of reform will come not from the opposition and dissidents, and from the broader circles of Belarusan society that is interested in improving the quality of training of specialists with higher education, internationalization and liberalization of higher school.