Uladzimir Dunaeu: We should reform the whole system of education – both secondary and higher

A Groundhog Day of admission campaign to Belarus’ universities continues. School graduates are twice fewer than payless spots for freshmen in universities, so everyone willing to enters higher school.

Get 5 grades out of 100 and welcome to agronomists!

Shortage of students for budgetary places in Belarus’ state universities is witnessed in 11 universities, where on July 26-28 an additional admission is held. The Ministry of Education is silent as to what universities are these apart from the four following universities: Vitebsk state technological university, Homel state technical university, agricultural academy in Gorki, and Mahilieu state university.

In order to fill the yawning hole with students, the management of the university is going to reduce “threshold” grades for the university entrants.

“EuroBelarus” Information Service discussed the results of the first wave of admission campaign with Uladzimir Dunaeu, professor of philosophy, a former Vice Rector of the EHU, and the member of the public Bologna committee.

Demography challenges education

- 11 Belarus’ universities have empty payless spots to fill in. What does it indicate?

- First of all, it says the following: despite the reduction of the number of spots in universities, free spots still exceed the potential number of university entrants. Basically, if we disregard all sort of rhetoric, there are no filters. We see that certain specializations have ridiculous grades for admission – such as 5 out of 100 grades in military universities.

That is why the level of competence of the future university graduates causes serious apprehensions.

Of course, the crisis of secondary education is a serious factor that lowers the quality of university entrants. But the problem is different: due to the abundance of places in universities practically everyone can now enter a university. That situation has been continuing since 2010.

Let me note that this is not a specific Belarus’ problem; it refers to the whole European higher education system. There are demographic problems – a serious challenge for the higher education system after its extensive growth of several decades. Naturally, with the extensive growth of the number of university entrants the system of education is facing serious demographic challenges.

Poor results of Centralized Testing is a boomerang of the school reform-2008

- There are now much fewer school graduates – twice as less than we had 5 years ago. But the disproportionate number of spots for freshmen exists because of the unwillingness to cut down university teachers.

Clearly, this year nobody will dare to introduce such curtailments since it’s the year of the presidential elections. Although curtailments of university teachers are unavoidable, it is very painful for the higher education system; that is why different methods to cut the situation short at the expense of foreign students are invented.

Belarus sees inflow of foreign students, but it doesn’t eradicate the problem, since it doesn’t make up for the losses of Belarusan students.

As I’ve already mentioned, this situation has been repeating since 2010, when the number of spots for freshmen exceeded the number of secondary school graduates for the first time. Likewise the previous year, we see that school graduates demonstrate poor results of the centralized testing.

On the other hand, the situation with school certificates didn’t change: marks in them are higher than those of the centralized testing. I.e. we see that secondary school is in critical state, and that is to a large degree the result of the school reform-2008. The attempts to restore some elements of the system that existed before 2008 are very slow and incomparable to the losses demonstrated by the system of secondary education.

Fortunately, specialized education is being restored. But we need a radical reform of secondary education. At least circumstances will make us go back to 1-year education system.

Insanity of the system

- Don’t you feel déjà vu during the current admission campaign? As it happens so that it doesn’t differ from the former one that was totally failing, and the system of higher education stuck in the stupid Groundhog Day.

- It is absolutely the same as the former one, and the conclusion that we should change something is the same each year. But these changes are very shy and insignificant. If the number of spots for freshmen is reducing by 1 thousand it doesn’t affect the situation it doesn’t affect the situation, since the number of school graduates is also reducing.

Non-desire of the university management and management of the education sphere to radically intervene in the process and at the same their understanding of the impossibility to change all by mere spells arouses the insanity of the system.

About the motives and habits of the Ministry of Education

- Why do you think the press-service of the Ministry of Education refuses to voice the names of the unpopular universities and specialties, but only names four institutions where shortage is calculated by hundreds?

- First, we don’t have transparency at all. The Ministry of Education hides statistics and hardly informs about anything. Please, note that even the analytical report on the system of higher education is not published in the Internet, but only exists for the administrative use.

I cannot say that there are some motives to withdraw this information from public; I think it is a mere habit to hide information from the society, which transformed into some mania in the Ministry of Education.  And this situation is worsening from year to year. Several years ago the Ministry of Education has become more open about it, with the discussions about entering the Bologna process.

- It is clear that we should get rid of the existing selection mechanisms and invent new ones. But can we do it without the reform of the secondary school?

- Of course, not. If the general level is low, we can only choose the best of the worst. But the task is to considerably improve the quality of the secondary education to make results better in the higher education, too. Then we get a chance to be stricter to the university entrants and won’t be amusing ourselves with illusions that Chinese students will save our higher education system.

The catastrophe is still ahead

-  From July 26 to 28 university entrants that didn’t manage to get payless spots in the four previously mentioned universities can try to do it one more time. Is there any sense in organization of such secondary attempts for the former school idlers and lazy-bones?

- This attempt creates a certain illusion of selection process. Yes, there is competition for some prestigious professions, but in general we see that there is no competition as such. If the admission grade is 5 out of 100, it’s equal to the complete ignorance. In this sense all kind of additional competitions is an attempt to save state budget.

What will happen when we get the full information about the paid spots – what shortage of students will we have then? The situation is much worse than it seems now only at the basis of the first wave of admission. Let’s wait to se the results of the admission campaign in general; but I don’t think it will give us reason for optimism.

Clearly, we should reform the education system in general – both the secondary and the higher. But for now only shy steps that don’t change the situation are taken. We have certain challenge and Road Map in relation to the entrance into the Bologna process that could somehow influence the quality of the higher education. But we still didn’t hear anything about how the Ministry of Education is going to realize its obligations for the Road Map apart from the statement that we will have something similar to elections of the university head.