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NON-GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTES OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN RUSSIA: REALITY AND PROSPECTS
O. I. Kosenko
In December 2001, the Government of the Russian Federation considered and approved the Concept of Modernisation of Russian Education for the Period up to 2010 [1] developed by the Ministry of Education of Russia. The document states that the governmental, political, social and economic transformations of the late 1980s and the early 1990s made an essential impact on Russian education and, in particular, allowed the development of the non-governmental sector of education. The measures on modernisation of Russian education were suggested to include further development of non-governmental educational organisations/establishments with a simultaneous increase in control over the quality of educational programs they implement. In particular, an increase in the requirement of quality vocational training, re-attestation and repeated licensing of non-governmental institutes of higher education issuing state-approved diplomas as appropriate.
Seven years passed, and in December 2008, the Minister of Education and Science A. Fursenko had to recognise the expediency of an essential reduction in the total number of institutes of higher education operating in the country. The minister stated that Russia today has about 50 serious competitive universities. Some 150-200 more institutes of higher education provide good education, but with narrower specialisations. All in all, there are 1,500 accredited institutes of higher education and 2,200 branches in the country today. According to A. Fursenko, "in the near future, the number of branches of institutes of higher education in the regions will halve, some of them being closed, others being attached to those providing better education. In about four years, the number of institutes of higher education is going to be cut by 20 %, also by reorganisation and through mergers” [2].
It is reasonable to expect that the modernisation of the Russian system of higher education will affect non-governmental institutes of higher education first of all. Practice shows that a lot of non-governmental institutes of higher education in Russia do not provide the necessary quality of training for students for the following reasons:
(a) their training and methodological basis is weak. As a rule, they have insufficiently well-equipped educational premises, out-of-date hardware, labware and research literature;
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(b) the regular faculty is scanty. The primary academic load is fulfilled by hourly workers, highly qualified teachers of many subjects being unavailable;
(c) the methodological maintenance of the academic process is primitive. As little original authoring as there is, there is no financial stimulus for it to be introduced;
(d) at the stage of enrolment of students, there is no strict selection of entrants. Non-governmental institutes of higher education actually take in all solvent "customers”;
(e) the widely advertised individual approach to teaching actually turns into low exactitude with students. Although there is some fall-off as a result of attestation, it is insignificant;
(f) teachers and students carry out no serious research work as there is no necessary funding;
(g) the overwhelming majority of non-governmental institutes of higher education have no internal system of control over the quality of training, and the students are deprived of a real ability to influence the quality of the educational process;
(h) the heads of the non-governmental institutes of higher education include a lot of come-and-go people, ignoring democratic principles of university education. Regular teachers have no reliable protection against their arbitrariness.
The today's licensing of educational activity does not guarantee quality of education: according to Article 33.9 of the law On Education, “the content, organisation and methods of the educational process shall not be the subject of expert examination” [3]. According to the established order, the institute of higher education to be attested shall itself draw up a report on its achievements in the accounting period. This document is quite often made up in such a way that truth intertwines with fiction in a hope that the officials checking the institute of higher education and representatives of governmental institutes of higher education will not get to the fact of the matter. As a rule, the committee is met in a very hospitable way as generous payment for consultations held by the members of the committees removes many questions; the self-authored report of the institute of higher education is amended as appropriate, and the expert judgement with a positive assessment is usually subscribed to unanimously. Certainly, it is not everywhere and not always that everything goes off so smoothly. If the non-governmental institute of higher education gets on a "black list” with the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the reason being litigation between an institute of
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higher education and a student's parent, the institute of higher education is usually in for serious complications at the stage of governmental attestation.
As for the general tendency, it is as follows: despite its apparent defects, the non-governmental sector of higher education goes on developing extensively, seizing increasingly more territories in the regions. In a situation where licences are extremely seldomly withdrawn, and nobody is going to close unaccredited institutes of higher education, the non-governmental sector of higher education is becoming stronger, gaining vigour and establishing the necessary contacts with the authorities it needs. Non-governmental institutes of higher education have enough funds to attain their goals, which allows successful lobbying for their interests at various levels.
To change this situation, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation is going to finish development of the draft law on education in the near future and submit it to the general public for discussion.
You can find our own proposals as applied to higher education below.
In our opinion, it is high time we changed the existing order of licensing of university activities. The respective requirements should contain some absolutely unambiguous obligations of the educational institution on the necessary quality of the educational process. Every institute of higher education should clearly understand what is meant by qualitative training of students, which the institute of higher education must guarantee from the very beginning of its activity and not only in the long term. At the same time, we think we should introduce a new procedure of compliance testing with the licence requirements at the stages of governmental attestation. The necessary information should be assembled regularly - say, annually - and from various sources, which is very important. In addition to the respective committees of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the quality of training should also be assessed by the organisations concerned - first of all, business structures and public organisations of students.
The normal functioning and development of a modern institute of higher education is known to need considerable capital. That means that institutes of higher education have to be founded by well-off physical and legal bodies, who can be subdivided into two groups. One group is comprised of those who invest material resources, including funds, into the institute of higher education. This group of founders can be represented by:
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(a) the governmental bodies or organisations placing educational and other premises at the disposal of the institute of higher education on some terms;
(b) entrepreneurial structures represented by particular firms investing some funds into the educational facilities and the resource base of the institute of higher education, e.g. creation of a library, laboratories, computer classes, etc.;
(c) public organisations representing the students and other consumers of educational services paying for their training. Another group of founders is made up of direct organisers and participants of the educational activity, including:
(a) the institutes of higher education attested and accredited by the government and able to actively contribute to methodological support of the educational process in a new institute of higher education;
(b) highly skilled faculty ready to work in a new institute of higher education on a regular basis;
(c) managers experienced in organizing educational activity.
In the above system of co-foundation, it is necessary to identify and legislatively fix the primary, leading link possessing the necessary authorities to be licensed for educational activity. In our opinion, such a founder should be represented by highly skilled faculty ready to work in the institute of higher education on a regular basis.
Practical experience has convincingly shown that: The majority of today's Russian establishments of education have no steady connection with employers, the markets of labour and education being actually independently from each other. As a result, a lot of enterprises are short of qualified workers and specialists, and a considerable amount of graduates of higher educational institutions have to work in careers for which they are not trained. It seems necessary to legally fix not only the right but also the obligation of business to take part in professional training of employees. For this purpose, the following measures seem expedient to take:
1) to create a national system of professional standards as the basis of governmental educational standards, which would become a system of independent assessment of the quality of education and certification of qualifications;
2) to form databases aimed at the objective assessment of the labour market and forecast the demand in workers and specialists in the long run.
It also seems expedient to amend tax laws to allow payment for not only direct training costs, but also adjacent costs, including investments into the resource base of educational institutions, retraining of personnel, etc.,
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as corporate educational costs. According to a recently adopted law, today's higher educational institutions are entitled to found small innovative enterprises on a commission basis. That means that Russian institutes of higher education can now more fully implement their intellectual potential, but only if business structures provide them with respective orders.
In conclusion, let us state the following. The existing division of Russian institutes of higher education into governmental and nongovernmental seems to be wrong-headed - an institute of higher education cannot be non-governmental as it takes part in formation of the intellectual elite of the society, and the government cannot stand aside. Therefore, any institute of higher education funded either from the state budget, off the state budget or in a mixed way should be obligatorily subject to governmental regulation. Remaining aloof from the direct activity of institutes of higher education, preserving and even protecting the quite broad autonomy that has developed over recent years, the government should simultaneously have some real leverage in influencing educational institutions unable to provide quality training to students.
References
1. Бюллетень Министерства образования Российской Федерации. - М.: Московский лицей, 2002. - № 2. - С. 6, 16.
2. Код учителя. (Интервью Министра А. Фурсенко) / Рос. газета. -2008. - 4 дек. URL: http://www.rg.ru/2008/12/04/ege.html
3. ФЗ «Об образовании» - М.: ИНФРА-М, 2002, - С. 30. - Вып. 28.
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