Federal Target Program "Personnel" - it was smooth on paper...

“Troitsky Option” continues to monitor the progress of competitions of the Federal Target Program “Scientific and Scientific-Pedagogical Personnel of Innovative Russia”

The Federal Target Program (FTP) “Personnel” was conceived to support the best scientific and educational centers, scientific groups and individual young researchers. Having made its way in serious competition with the projects of many other federal target programs, the Federal Target Program “Personnel” finally started working this year, even if the initially planned expenses for it were cut due to the crisis. However, it was not destined to justify hopes for a qualitative difference in the organization of competitions and examinations from the way it is organized in already existing federal target programs of a scientific and technical orientation. This is primarily due to the Federal Law of July 21, 2005 No. 94-FZ “On placing orders for the supply of goods, performance of work, provision of services for state and municipal needs” and the psychology of officials who do not want to deviate from the established templates for holding competitions. The fact is that Federal Law 94-FZ establishes rules for assessing applications submitted for competitions that practically do not take into account the peculiarities of the scientific and educational sphere (see the issue of the “Trinity Option” dated March 17, 2009), and, in addition, prescribes an application procedure that is inconvenient for the normal organization of scientific competitions, and officials, on their own initiative, make the application procedure even more difficult and confusing.

In the case of competitions of scientific and educational centers (RECs) held by Rosnauka, which had some experience in conducting scientific competitions (leading scientific schools, etc.), the competition documentation was inconvenient. But, as far as Federal Law 94-FZ allows, it was at least relatively adequate and, so to speak, feasible for the REC teams. Therefore, the main substantive losses were associated with the criteria for evaluating applications dictated by federal law (of the winning teams, less than two-thirds would have won if the applications were evaluated only according to scientific criteria). But in the competitions of Rosobrasovanie, which has never held mass scientific competitions, the competition documentation turned out to be extremely inconvenient and cumbersome for applicants. As a result, the “main round” of competitions for scientific groups led by doctors and candidates of science, as well as for young candidates of science and graduate students, held in May - August 2009, was, without exaggeration, a failure.

Firstly, many of those who could participate in the competition deliberately refused to do so after reading the set of competition documentation. For groups led by doctors of science, 3.1 applications were submitted per place, for groups led by candidates of science - 2.2 applications per place, for young candidates of science - 2.5 applications per place, for graduate students - ... 0.6 applications per place place. For comparison: for RECs the average competition was approximately 6 applications per place, and in 2008 the competition for grants from the President of the Russian Federation for young candidates of science was approximately 5.4 applications per place. And this despite the fact that the size of the grant from the President of the Russian Federation for a young candidate of sciences at that time was 150 thousand rubles. per year, and the price of a government contract for a graduate student within the framework of the Federal Target Program “Personnel” can reach up to 500 thousand rubles. per year, and for a young candidate of sciences - up to 1 million rubles. in year.

Secondly, it is not enough to submit an application - it is also necessary that it be admitted to the competition. Both graduate students and doctors of science did not perform well in the all-important bureaucratic science of correctly preparing applications: approximately 40% of applications were not admitted to the competition for failure to comply with application requirements. Thus, the real competition turned out to be even lower than described above. For some lots, all (!) submitted applications were rejected; for other lots, the initially existing competition was reduced to nothing. Thus, for the lot “Creation of an electronic component base”, which provided for the conclusion of 7 government contracts, out of 29 submitted applications, 8 were recognized as meeting the requirements, and for the lot “Production of fuels and energy from organic raw materials”, which provided for the conclusion of 8 government contracts, out of 24 applications there were Only 6 were admitted to the competition. In fact, a competition was held for knowledge of all the bureaucratic nuances of holding the competition.

But perhaps, with all the ugliness of the procedure for preparing papers and submitting applications, the applications that passed the bureaucratic sieve were qualitatively assessed at least according to scientific criteria? Alas, this cannot be said either, as can be seen by comparing the scores according to scientific criteria received by applications from universities and research institutes in two “rounds” of REC competitions. The fact is that many institutions that did not win in the “first round” of REC competitions (stages I-VI) submitted applications for the “second round” (stages VII-X) on the same topic. Studying the minutes of the meeting of the competition commissions for evaluating and comparing applications, one can find many cases when applications from institutions that received high marks in the first round received one and a half, two, or even more times lower marks in the second (and vice versa). Thus, an application from the Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry named after. A.N. Frumka-at the Russian Academy of Sciences in the first round according to the criterion “quality of work and qualifications of the participant” received 44.45 points, and in the second round - 19.8 points. The application of the Institute of Automation and Electrometry of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the first round according to the criterion “quality of work and qualifications of the participant” received 42.25 points, and in the second - 23.55 points. Of the counter-examples, perhaps the most impressive is the following: the application of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “State Order of the Red Banner of Labor Research Institute of Chemical Reagents and Highly Pure Chemicals” in the first round according to the criterion “quality of work and qualifications of the participant” scored 9.93 points, and in the second - 40.85 points.

It can be assumed that in some cases such a significant change in the assessment of an application is associated with a change in the application itself. But it is obvious (and in some cases, it is known for certain) that institutions that received high marks according to scientific criteria submitted exactly the same applications to the second round competitions, adjusting only the contract price and deadlines for completing the work. How, with a well-organized examination carried out independently by two or three qualified experts, such significant discrepancies in the assessment of applications are possible on a fairly large scale is a great mystery.

However, the leadership of the Ministry of Education and Science prefers to maintain Olympic calm and, moreover, reports on the successful work of the Program. For example, in early July, when it was already known about the disastrous progress of group competitions led by candidates of sciences and graduate students, Minister of Education and Science A.A. Fursenko reported to Prime Minister V.V. Putin that everything is going well and the competitions of the Federal Target Program “Personnel” are in demand. In an attempt to create a favorable impression about the progress of the Program, the Minister is sometimes openly disingenuous. So, in early October, speaking about the soon-to-be mass return of Russian scientists working abroad to their homeland, A.A. Fursenko said that there was great interest in the program currently being implemented by the Ministry of Education and Science, aimed at attracting Russian scientists living abroad to work with Russian students and graduate students (the competition was 8 people per place). We are talking about event 1.5 of the Federal Target Program “Personnel”, within the framework of which competitions are held for “invited researchers”, and anyone can go to the website of the Federal Target Program “Personnel” www.fcpk.ru (information about the Program activities supervised by Rosnauka is published there) and make sure that for event 1.5 the competition was not 8, but approximately 3.5 applications for one government contract. Rosnauk officials also say that the competitions are going well, Federal Law 94-FZ does not create any special difficulties, and the winners are truly worthy universities and research institutes.

They say that next year’s competitions for the Federal Targeted Program “Personnel” will begin to be announced this year. Will there be major changes to the application and assessment process? It seems that the position of the leadership of the Ministry of Education and Science, as well as the federal agencies subordinate to it - Rosnauka and Rosoobrazovanie, the essence of which can be expressed in the classic formula “Everything is fine, beautiful marquise!”, leaves no chance for this.

Evgeniy Onishchenko