Translated material
The deadline has been added. What's the point?
On November 1, the State Duma by an overwhelming majority of votes (445 - for, 1 - abstained) approved in the first reading an amendment extending by one year the period of study in graduate school (both full-time and part-time) for some specialties of technical and natural sciences that require experimental confirmation results. Despite the fact that the final list of specialties is not yet known, and the preliminary list includes only 38 items [1], the news caused a resonance.
The reaction (including in the LiveJournal community TrV-Nauka) basically boils down to the fact that there is no harm from this, but there is little benefit either, since the problems for the most part are related not so much to the duration of study in graduate school, but to the conditions of study and work. And if we extend the period, then it will really be for everyone who needs long-term experiments, field work, etc., and not for a narrow set of lobbied specialties.
So user xelat writes: “This is a half measure - there’s nothing to live on anyway. Given intensive work, it is possible to do it in three years - they have been doing it all these years. And if you need to work part-time, you may not even be able to make it in five.”
Kouprianov agrees with this point of view: “Since no one takes into account real labor costs anyway, an increase in gross time by a year means nothing at all. Moreover, in combination with meager scholarships and the need for part-time work.”
But there are also small advantages. “As they say, a black sheep gets a tuft of wool. It would be better if the scholarships were increased,” writes alisa lebovski . Someone rightly draws attention to the fact that the most important thing is an extra year in a hostel for nonresidents: “At least something useful from the State Duma. We can pay extra money for out-of-town graduate students to live on, but for housing in Moscow it’s crap. So an extra year in the hostel is a big plus,” says herasim .
It is obvious that the amendment essentially does not change anything in the postgraduate system in Russia. And there are many problems there [2]. In 2004, there were 142,662 graduate students in the country [3].
At the same time, out of 32,595 graduates, only 10,256 graduated from graduate school with the submission of a dissertation. This is unlikely to be related to the length of study. Rather, with the fact that, as Anna Khripunova writes: “... graduate school in general is somehow dying gradually, people go to get housing, get a deferment, etc.” The problem with defending on time arises not because of the short training time, but because of other difficulties. Graduate students are often forced to work part-time to support themselves. If they are engaged in experimental research, then difficulties may be associated with a lack of reagents and samples, with obtaining or repairing equipment, etc., and not with a lack of time. Finally, graduate students often spend a significant portion of their time on secretarial or technical work, since the research group does not always have competent secretaries or laboratory assistants.
Therefore, it is not surprising that many believe that the mountain gave birth to a mouse. Alexey Bobrovsky, in his commentary for Lenta.ru [4], says: “In my opinion, the State Duma is sometimes busy solving some ridiculous problems. Yes, perhaps the extension of postgraduate studies will somewhat improve the quality of training for postgraduate students. But not much. Against the backdrop of the death of Russian science, meager scholarships and salaries for scientific workers, it is simply ridiculous to seriously talk about what the duration of graduate school should be.”
Thus, the amendment evokes associations with patching up holes. Maybe the solution should not be to regulate everything correctly at the level of parliament and government, but to give universities and institutes the freedom, motivation and opportunity to create acceptable working and study conditions for their graduate students?
In conclusion, I will say that in the end, a candidate’s dissertation is, first of all, a qualifying work. In my opinion, since it is important that the graduate student, firstly, during his studies, acquires the skills necessary for independent scientific work, and secondly, demonstrates what he can do within the allotted time, then the deadline itself is not so important. There is no doubt that more significant work can be done in 10 years than in 3 years. But it’s quite possible to demonstrate your capabilities in three. It is important that the task be set realistically and completed within this period. It is also important to make adequate demands, since the situation when in some areas of knowledge dissertations are written in a year, but in others they are not completed in three, is abnormal. First of all, this suggests that the former simply have too low demands. And as a result, we do not get either specialists with the skills of independent scientific work, or, in fact, strong works.
1. http://leo-mosk.livejournal.com/527888ihtml
2. http://strf. ru/material.aspx?CatalogId=221&d_no=34750
3. “Indicators of science. Statistical collection." Moscow, State University-Higher School of Economics. 2006