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Purely in Russian ...
The results of monitoring of universities conducted by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation are commented by Andrei Rostovtsev , Dokt. physical. sciences, head of the laboratory of physics of elementary particles of ITEF.
The Ministry of Education and Science on its official website published the results of "Monitoring the activities of federal educational institutions of higher professional education." This is a very timely, progressive undertaking. True, as is customary in Rus', the first pancake is always lumpy. The criteria proposed to evaluate universities caused a lot of criticism, and a lot has already been said and written about them. Therefore, I will refrain from comments here. What interests me in this new phenomenon is the “Russianness”, which was brightly manifested in the ministerial document on “Monitoring”. Especially embossed national Russian features are manifested when you compare the Russian “monitoring” of universities with Western, university ratings recognized around the world. It is in this context that I will try to characterize this recently published important document.
The thirst for justice is one of the features of a national character. At the same time, the search for justice in Russia is often reduced to the search for the perpetrator, to the straightforward division of the world into black and white. That in Western culture it is customary to keep silent from the tact, considerations of good tone, in Russia is pronounced without abyss and outskirts. This cannot be noticed in the assessment of the activities of educational institutions. If the world ratings of universities are in front of the TOP-10, the TOP-100 of the best of the best are called the champions names, then the first thing you come across in the “monitoring” of Russian universities is “indicators for classifying universities to a group that have signs of inefficiency”. It is purely Russian: it is important to put the stigma. It is not so important what is the stigma of a foreign agent or an ineffective university. In Russia, the negative of the assessment is significantly exaggerated when it comes to subordinates, and sedimentary to the bosses is hypertrophied. Of course, we must deal with clearly weak educational institutions, but this should be done carefully, especially since the state itself is to blame for the most part in their “weakness”.
Emely syndrome. It should be noted that serious world rating agencies imply the presence of a professional team of employees who are engaged in this case, as they say, Full-Time, and the thousands of independent experts, whose opinion in the ratings is taken into account with a noticeable weight, finally a solid project budget. It seems that of all of the listed in our case, only the latter was present. Instead of independent experts, the Union of the rector of the same universities that they themselves were going to evaluate. Monitoring criteria are built exclusively on indicators that can be easily found in the available electronic databases of the ministry: the number of square meters of area, the average USE score, the volume of financing, the number of students and teachers. It seems that one of the goals of “monitoring” was to conduct it as a shorter time and preferably without unnecessary labor and time. In Russia, for this there is a good expression "make on the knee." Of course, this is not so bad if it is not done to the detriment of the true indicators of the quality of education received at the university.
Collegiality is often addressed to circular bail. On 111 pages of the document on “monitoring” there was no place to list its true authors, their real contact details, their experience and social portrait - all that no self -respecting Western rating of universities can do without. After the results of the world -famous rating of the publishing house The Publishing House Times Higher Education It was not difficult for me to immediately contact his authors, although I personally did not know any of them, and get competent answers to my question. Even after that, I received a couple of days from the publishing house Times Letters with a polite request to confirm that they were able to give exhaustive answers to my request.
You can also notice that our traditionally non-market attitude to education (as opposed to the Western European approach) is now turning into its opposite, and in some hypertrophied forms. A commercial approach to university education is also traced in “monitoring”. This was confirmed by Minister Dmitry Livanov himself, speaking on November 7, 2012 at the Echo of Moscow radio station [1]. He suggested that the criteria for inefficiency include the number of university graduates registered on labor exchanges. I understand that this may make sense for narrow -profile technical schools, but not for universities. In my deep conviction, it is not the market that forms a university, but more than an academic education in the country, but rather vice versa. If this is not so, then maybe in the conservatory you need to correct something?
And the last. The text of this large document has a very important footnote, as well as the state of the company is precisely characterizing: “The presented monitoring results exclude data on educational institutions, the functions of the founders in respect of which the General Prosecutor's Office, the Supreme Court, the Supreme Arbitration Court, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Civil Defense, Emergency Situations and the Encovement of the Consequences of Natural Disasters, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry Federal Penitentiary Service, Federal Customs Service of the Russian Federation. ” That is, to kick a pedagogical unit and flaunt it as “ineffective” without any fear, but to encroach on the holy of holies, where, judging by our reality, the situation is really catastrophic ... What is called in Russian?