Downsizing universities is a new reform. Alternative offer

The current system of Russian higher education has accumulated many critical problems, and the fact that the Ministry of Education and Science has launched a major reform is certainly correct. You can make a large list of problems, but the general idea boils down to the following: we have a lot of higher education in our country, but its quality is extremely low (not a single university is even among the top 100 in the world). I would even say that we do not have a HIGHER education, but some kind of addition to school education.

How did the Ministry begin to solve this problem? Reduce the number of universities, and raise the level of education of the remaining ones. But how to correctly select those educational institutions that are subject to liquidation? The developed criteria caused understandable dissatisfaction; not a single university would agree to close down of its own free will; naturally, everyone who found themselves “on the sidelines” is now screaming about unfair rules. The developed criteria really give rise to fair criticism (just compare the indicators of the number of square meters per student). The higher education system is so complex that it will never be possible to compare different institutions using simple mathematical indicators, and the compilers themselves will get confused in complex ones. Moreover, it is completely incomprehensible why some universities are closing (RGTEU), while others are being optimized (RGGU), to put it mildly - this does not look like fair selection.

The path taken by the Ministry of Education and Science is very contradictory. Firstly, there is a danger that the universities that will close are no worse than those that will remain. Secondly, it is not yet clear how the quality of education will be improved in the remaining educational institutions. Thirdly, the Ministry is dramatically changing the “rules of the game” in the system and those universities that are hypothetically ready to carry out full optimization may be liquidated before it begins.

In this article I want to propose an alternative option for carrying out this reform, quite radical, but simpler and more understandable, as it seems to me. The main proposals can be briefly formulated in three points.

1. Dramatically reduce the number of state diplomas and increase requirements for graduates. State diplomas should become a value for which both students and universities fight. The main indicator of the quality of a university should be the number of graduates who have passed state certification.

2. Completely remove the functions of certifying graduates from universities. The educational institution should only engage in teaching, and independent commissions should administer the final exams.

3. Create state certification commissions for groups of specialties, completely independent of universities; only they will have the right to issue state diplomas. An analogue of the current VAKs, which certify for an academic degree (though our VAKs are half-dead).

Now in more detail on each point.

1. We are reducing the number of state diplomas

Today, more state diplomas are issued in Russia than school certificates. For example, diplomas in economics are distributed by every Russian university left and right (including private ones). A state diploma has long ceased to be an indicator of knowledge and level of education. Moreover, we have a tradition of entering an educational institution just to “get a diploma”, well, so that there is one, but getting one is not difficult.

The number of diplomas should be sharply reduced; higher education diplomas should be issued per year 4-5 times less than school certificates. Thus we achieve:

a) competition for the status of a certified specialist in the student community, and therefore competition for knowledge;

b) competition between universities (both private and public) for the number of certified graduates.

2. We are removing certification functions from universities

Exactly the same principle was implemented in the Unified State Exam, and the principle is absolutely correct. Naturally, schools are interested in inflating the grades of their graduates, and their grades cannot be considered objective; the same is true with other educational institutions. Each university can issue any of its own graduation certificates, but a state diploma can only be issued by an independent certification commission.

3. Creation of independent certification commissions

Certification commissions are created from representatives of the professional community (scientists) and employers (business representatives from various fields). Commission functions:

a) formation of requirements for graduates, the certification commission makes, as it were, an order for graduates, and the university fulfills it;

b) determining the list of exams for graduates;

c) determining the form of examinations;

d) conducting final exams.

What can be achieved by carrying out reform in this way:

— improving the status of higher education and state diplomas;

— competition in the field of education, and hence the quality of education, is sharply increasing;

— all universities are placed in the same conditions (both public and private);

- gradually ineffective universities will die out on their own (in 3-5 years), there is no point in enrolling in places where the chances of getting a diploma are minimal;

— The Ministry will receive a clear and understandable criterion for assessing the quality of educational institutions and will make their funding dependent on the quality of education of graduates;

— employers gain access to the education system and can form an “order” for the specialists they need;

— an educational institution can have an arbitrarily large degree of freedom in choosing forms of education and its own programs, but the final quality will still be checked by independent specialists, such an assessment can already be considered objective.

If any of the officials are reading this or someone is simply interested, write, I can describe in more detail with examples how such a system could work.