Diploma with recognition

VTsIOM compiled a rating of Russian universities based on surveys of graduates and employers

Representatives of VTsIOM and Business Russia intend to make an attempt to make the sociological approach the basis for assessing the quality of Russian higher education. Yesterday, at a meeting of the Public Council under the Ministry of Education and Science, they presented the methodology for compiling the first ranking of domestic universities, which should guide both applicants and employers when selecting graduates. The publication of this rating is scheduled for the end of May, just before the start of the next entrance campaign. However, it is obvious that this “university report card” is aimed, rather, not at schoolchildren and their parents, but at government leaders and businessmen, who have long been waiting for new criteria for assessing the effectiveness of universities, institutes and academies from independent sources.

“The rating is intended to assess the specific results of the work of universities,” Nikolai Brusnikin, a member of the General Council of Business Russia, said yesterday. According to him, in the process of creating the rating, all parties to the educational process were surveyed : employers, recruitment agencies and the young specialists themselves who received their diploma in 2002-2003. In total, the opinions of 4 thousand graduates, 175 recruitment agencies and universities named by employers were received. The error in compiling the rating, as assured by First Deputy General Director of VTsIOM Konstantin Abramov, does not exceed 3.5%. Based on the totality of the data obtained, nine tables will be compiled, the main one of which will indicate the best universities in the country. A rating of the best regional higher educational institutions, a rating of the success of graduates in the labor market, a rating of the popularity of universities, etc. will also be formed.

In the context of the growing system of support for universities both from the state and the business community through grants, places in various rankings are becoming a rather important criterion for institutes and universities. And therefore, today there is already noticeable competition both between universities and between companies that claim to serve as an evaluator of the quality of higher education. VTsIOM won the competition organized by Business Russia, in which eight organizations participated. However, as yesterday’s discussion by members of the Public Council under the Ministry of Education and Science showed, research based solely on opinion polls does not provide complete confidence in the objectivity of assessing the quality of education. In particular, Alexey Venediktov, a member of the public council and editor-in-chief of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, said that there should be many ratings, and they should be based on different methods. “It is clear that in terms of graduate success, the leader is the Law Faculty of Leningrad State University,” he believes. “No matter how interesting this ranking is, it does not exhaust most of our education,” noted the head of the Ministry of Education and Science Andrei Fursenko.

On the other hand, businessmen have also repeatedly emphasized that they are not satisfied with the old assessment methodology, which involved a mathematical calculation of the number of students, the volume of teaching space, the proportion of doctors and candidates of science among teachers, etc. Perhaps these indicators are decisive for granting a university state accreditation, but they do not mean anything to the employer. However, it is apparently difficult to obtain an integral assessment. Including because institutes, universities and academies do not seek to transfer data on their economic and educational activities to third parties. “We cannot oblige universities to provide their databases - they live their own lives,” explained Elena Gevorkyan, deputy head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Education and Science.

Kirill MELNIKOV