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Valery Khomyakov, General Director of the Institute for National sStrategy
I went to school in 1956, the time of the 20th Party Congress,
and all the course books for first grade were printed in advance.
All of Stalin's portraits and quotes had been cut out
so we, the first-graders, got our first course books with holes, missing some pictures.
I remember this because some of our reforms remind me of those course books,
because something remains Soviet, judging from the public opinion pressure
and something new is being introduced.
I will fully agree with the statement by experts that the Soviet system has been completely destroyed
It had its disadvantages, there was too much ideology, especially in the humanities,
but there were many strong points.
The main one was that the state really made sure
that every Soviet citizen received first a secondary education then higher education if possible.
There were indeed many numbers, statements that the Soviet education was the best,
that we had these amount of specialists in these disciplines...
But still, I think that what we are seeing now is very strange.
We can also see it in the media.
Students are protesting, teachers are unhappy with their low salaries,
the universities are being closed down, sometimes for a reason.
But where is the guarantee that the universities were indeed closed because they were ineffective?
What are the criteria? What is the system model for our education?
Anglo-American or European?
If we do not answer this question, we will receive that very course book,
and our whole system will be utterly ineffective.
This is an important question - the effectiveness of education.
I understand it like this.
First, the criterium for the effectiveness of our education
is the number of scholars who make a contribution to fundamental and applied science.
The second criterium is the capacity of the system to reproduce itself, even with some development.
I will explain.
I mean that if we need specialists of this level and specialization,
they appear as a result of our system.
In this sense, I agree that our school education is not of the best quality.
When we found out that some writers who deserved to be in school textbooks were excluded.
For example, Kuprin, Leskov, Babel, while Pelevin was left on.
I do not want to offend him, but it is no secret that he writes a lot about drugs.
Sergey Markov, Director of the Institute of Political Studies
Our education system is now in the process of being reformed.
This reform is being carried out at the request of the citizens.
It is known that the majority believes that the situation is unsatisfactory and should be changed.
Secondly, it is under pressure from the current job market and contemporary life,
which demand that Russia becomes more effective.
Almost all world sociologists say today that the sphere of education
is one of the most important for an effective economy and effectiveness of social institutions in general,
therefore reformation of education is unavoidable.
It is implemented according to the normal model.
We are not implementing the Anglo-American, but the Russian model,
that was for centuries connected to the continental model
that developed mostly on the basis of German and French universities.
This continental model means that we combine state and private resources that go to education
This is where the logic of combining budget and non-budget funding comes from,
because it is inherent in the current continental model.
There is state financing and financing from family resources.
From this point of view we maybe have a stronger emphasis on private funding,
but I am almost sure it will be balanced
and we will develop within the framework of the general continental model.
As for the Soviet model, you know it was of course very good.
Therefore we managed to send the first person to space,
and we all remember how the American Congress called the Soviet model the best in the world
and called for its development.
This is true.
But everyone understands that full imitation of the Soviet model is impossible for many reasons.
First of all, because it was a model of the closed type, while now we live in an open global society.
We can't implement for a global society something that was implemented for a closed society.
As you remember, the Soviet model also implied highly ideological education.
This is again a typical feature of the closed model.
Only in the closed model can you produce ideological personnel and have a theory of scientific communism,
while when your borders are open you need to freely compete with others.
Another important moment - in the Soviet model you could send graduates wherever you wanted.
While in the contemporary model, graduates can go wherever they want,
therefore the system of education and the workplaces should be correlated.
It is obvious to me that we are now combining the Soviet and the Western models.
One of the reasons why Dmitry Livanov was appointed minister of education
was in the success that he achieved in his position as rector of the Steel Institute.
By the way, this was the institute for Soviet nano-technologies.
In fact, it is a university for the study of materials that creates modern materials and we see that,
under him, this university has achieved great results in combining the Soviet and the Western models.
The government set a task for the Ministry of Education to create a structure
that will bring the findings of the universities to the world market.
Special bodies need to be created for that, and the Steel Institute had the so-called fablab.
That was a technological space that helped students with their start-ups.
This fablab was the first example of Russian production.
The fablab should help create the business structures of high technologies where the students go.
We will also have to create a separate system for humanities, similar to that of the Steel Institute,
that we are propagating for the entire system of education.
For natural sciences there should be a separate system, for humanities it should have a different basis.
There is another aspect concerning humanities.
I understand that Livanov is a graduate of a technical institute.
It is clear that he understands little and pays less attention to humanities.
But I understand this because we all ask ourselves -
do we really want universities to produce these endless flocks of economists and lawyers
that are not needed by the economy?
Or do we want our universities to produce engineers who would work in highly technological spheres
and a developed economy?
The answer is obvious.
We need engineers, we need technical universities, the logic of the government is clear,
it should be supported.
But we should not allow for the disappearance of the humanities.
The main question is not a reduction of the humanities but a reduction of the hours for humanities
in the natural sciences.
The reduction of the hours for humanities can reduce the personal development
of the students of these universities.
This is of course a very important problem.
Now about the important issues of teachers' salaries.
There are of course problems.
He is trying to solve it but encounters obstacles from the Ministry of Finance,
but they need to be addressed to the Minister of Finance,
who does not allocate resources to increase the salaries of doctors and teachers.
Another important question is the reduction in the number of universities.
I think this question is more about making some universities bigger that fits the general logic.
Apart from this, of course we need to remove fake universities that devalue education.
There are many institutes like this that cannot pass any effectiveness rating.
The effectiveness ratings were created precisely to separate them from the normal universities.
It is a difficult but manageable task.
At the moment we are bringing together the Plekhanov Russian Economic Univeristy
and the Russian State Technological University.
You remember that last year there were many complicated processes.
Now we do not have these problems.
The students are very happy that they will receive the diploma of Plekhanov University.
The professors are happy that they have less teaching hours and have more time for research
and individual consultations.
Everything is good.
We went to some regional branches.
Some are good, for instance one in Krasnodar.
It works very well and is competitive in the region.
But those in the Moscow region...
Imagine - there are only two rooms.
One is for classes, the other belongs to the director.
And they are both located in a shopping mall.
Of course, branches like this should be closed,
while all those who study there should be given the possibility to finish their studies in Moscow.