Disposals and optimization

The Higher School of Economics Closed the Dissertation Council for Economics, the Internet publication Znak.com , who exiled to the telegram channel of publicist Yegor Kholmogorov, was closed at the Higher School of Economics. “In the Higher School of the economy, the dissent was closed ... in the economy ... (there should be some kind of emoji, but there is no such emoji in nature),” the publication quotes his words.

Kholmogorov accompanied this message by the Ministry of Defense of the Ministry of Defense of June 26 on suspension in the Higher School of Activities of the D21204806 dissection. In addition, the publication noted that the specialty of this council really was the economy and management of the national economy (innovation management; marketing; management). It also emphasized that at the same time, a number of other dissertation councils are still in effect, and suggested that the closure of the dissoet could be due to the optimization of the dissertation councils, begun in 2015.

Later, information appeared that there is no question of closing a dissoeting manner yet. It was reported that his activities were suspended (as mentioned in Kholmogorov’s order) in connection with violations in two protection, which led to the abolition of two decisions on the award of the scientific degree of candidate of sciences.

The situation with the requirements for the dissertation councils of Russian universities was commented by Andrei Tsaturyan for Polit.ru, a leading researcher at the Mechanics of the Moscow State University, a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences. In his opinion, the reduction of weak dissertation councils is the desired process, and the requirements for them are quite clear and are not excessive.

“As for the tendency to reduce the number of dissertation councils in Russian universities, it really exists. And this is not directly related to the activities of Dissernet, although the dissertation councils were most reduced in precisely the humanitarian and social sciences, which he mainly is not exclusively engaged in. The reduction also applies to advice on the exact sciences, such a process really occurs.

Scientific experiment / pixabay.com

Currently, the country is defending less dissertations than a few years ago, and there are dissothes where very few dissertations are defended. There are also dissociates, where there is a very weak composition. Recently, the Higher Attestation Commission was formulated rather serious requirements for the publications of members of the dissertation councils. Because of this, many dissertation councils are closed or cannot open again-because they simply do not recruit people with proper qualifications.

In general, the requirements for members of the dissertation councils are now quite stringent. They are even a little softened recently: now it is enough that not all 100 percent of the council members, but, say, 70 percent, are satisfied with the necessary criteria. But even many dissociates cannot take this bar, and therefore they close. So their reduction is a normal phenomenon.

Do I still need to tighten the requirements for dissociators? This issue was discussed at different levels (and I participated in some discussions). It is very difficult to make these requirements common to all branches of knowledge: after all, we have a very diverse science. For example, Russian mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry are quite “convertible”, are included in world science, and there it is reasonable to demand that people have publications indexed by world databases. And in the humanitarian and even in the social sciences there are simply almost no dissections, if you put the same high requirements. Therefore, the requirements are softened in these areas.

In a word, there are nuances in different fields, but in principle, the requirements for dissociates are high enough so that not everyone can comply with them. And the optimization of the number of dissociations is an important process. I won’t name the exact figure now, but the number of dissertations defense over the past few years has been reduced approximately by half. I think that a decrease in the number of dissertation councils was comparable.

Recently, by the way, another informational occasion has appeared related to this topic: on July 7, a draft order of the Ministry of Education and Science was put up for public discussion ( we are talking about the draft document “On Amendments to the Regulation on the Council for the Protection of Dissertations for the Academic Candidate of Sciences, for the Legal degree of the Doctor of Science, approved by order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation dated January 13, 2014 No. 7” - No. 7 ” - approx . There are two innovations in it that seem anxious to me precisely in connection with the work of dissociates.

The first of them: it is proposed to prohibit being part of the dissertation councils to persons who were supervisor or scientific consultants of two or more dissertations, whose authors are deprived of a degree. This, of course, sounds good, but the requirement is very high. One false dissertation is more than enough for a person for five years, as they say now, “ban” and prohibit him to participate in the award of scientific degrees. A person who is a supervisor or scientific consultant is a person who read the dissertation by definition. I read - and did not notice that it was written off? Well, I don’t know who you need to be for this.

Diplomas ceremony / pixabay.com

The second innovation concerns another question. Now, if the Higher Attestation Commission has not allowed to open a dissertation council, because there are no people sufficient qualifications, such advice has the right to file an application and again ask themselves to open only three years later. This norm is offered to change, lowering the bar not even up to two years (which, in my opinion, would be reasonable), but up to one year. If we take into account that the procedure itself takes about six months - you prepare documents, send it to the Higher Attestation Commission, and passes about six months before the decision, then there are very few time in search of qualified members for the dissoet.

I'm afraid this will cause a carousel, endless attempts to resume the work of weak dissociates. A three-year ban nevertheless assigned some responsibility to the organization and gave time to correct the situation. Now this restriction is proposed to mitigate, and this, in my opinion, is the wrong measure. If the draft order takes place in the form in which it exists now, I am afraid that it will only aggravate the situation, ”said Andrei Tsaturyan.