Sviatlana Matskevich: For such a heavy price Belarusan education should equal European

The costs of education in Belarusan universities can be compared with that of European or Russian, whereas the quality of education noticeably differs for the worse.

This opinion shared Sviatlana Matskevich, the expert of the Humanitarian Techniques Agency and a candidate of pedagogic science in the talk with the EuroBelarus Information Service.

Belarusan universities are reported to level up tuition fees up to 20 per cent.

But does the quality of Belarusan education is adequate to the money students and their parents have to pay?

“It is hard to say, as Belarus doesn’t have more or less impartial assessment of the education quality, - Sviatlana Matskevich noted. – Accordingly, it is extremely difficult to give assessment whether the quality corresponds to the tariffs set administratively”.

Price doesn’t depend on quality

The expert recalled that Belarusan universities in the Ministry of Education determine prices on education on the basis of an average lecturer’s salary, trying to make it equal the average salary in the industrial sector.

“I.e. the main criterion is the salary of the university staff, whereas quality doesn’t matter. And lecturer’s salary is not dependent on the education quality. We lack any mechanism to introduce such”, - noticed Sviatlana Matskevich.

Belarusan customers, though, are interested in the output of their investment to education.

“Output is the quality that will be in demand on the labor market and will somehow influence the salary in the future, - explained the candidate of pedagogic science. – However, Belarusan labor market can hardly be called market at all. The patterns traced in labor market system in Belarus are rather of target character, which means it doesn’t take into account the market. Whereas the consumer thinks that it is still a market and tries to figure out what professions are in demand and what qualities are required”.

We have nothing to boast of

According to Sviatlana Matskevich, quoting system in education today doesn’t correspond to the quality of education, which Belarusan universities provide. “We have rather low education quality and, unfortunately, we have nothing to boast of. And comparing to the Russian universities, our prices are even higher”, - noted the expert.

In Lithuania, for example, prices are formed on the basis of the market economy within the ranges recommended by the Ministry of Education. At the same time in Belarus prices are formed administratively, without taking into account type of education. “And it is university costs that are emphasized, though some other, new methods and new calculation should become the basis. In order to do that Ministry of Education should hire such specialists in the sphere of education economy. Unfortunately, Belarus has too few such specialists, and I think they are not involved in decision-making process”, - Sviatlana Matskevich assumed.