University metamorphosis

In September of this year, the term of my contract with Kazan Federal University ends. I decided not to conclude a new agreement by withdrawing my statement about participation in the competition. This decision was not easy after 20 years of research and teaching at Alma Mater. The reason for the departure is the complete transformation of Kazan University over the past five years. I would like to share their observations about what features are currently distinguished by one of the oldest universities in Russia, since I assume that they are to one degree or another characteristic of other Russian universities.

Surprisingly, even before 2010, one could talk about Kazan University as an island of relative freedom in the surrounding reality. Somehow-it was in the mid-2000s-my wife came from the school where she taught, with the form of an application for joining the United Russia party and reported that the director handed these statements to teachers and ordered them to bring them filled out the next day.

At that moment, the whole difference between the subordinate position of teachers and the relative independence of teachers of the university was obvious (the statement, however, remained unfilled, and this did not result in any consequences). To date, these differences have been reduced to a minimum. Kazan, now the Federal University over the past five years has become, in my opinion, the exact model of the situation in Russia with the following typical features.

1. Authoritarianism and non -EF Fective management .

In April 2010, Ilshat Gafurov, a former mayor of Elabuga, was appointed by order of the Russian government by the rector of KFU. The position of rector was previously elected. In a short time, the new rector built a vertical of power similar to the Russian at the University. Almost all faculties were transformed into institutes whose directors are appointed by the rector, unlike the elected deans of the faculties.

Management structures began to grow intensively. Only in the educational and methodological department of KFU over the past five years, departments of management and quality control of education, licensing and accreditation, design and analytical department, development department and practitioner department have been created.

The inevitable consequence of such a propagation of managerial structures was the strongest bureaucratization and the decrease in the quality of teaching from this. For the most part of the time of the teachers, not the improvement of the taught disciplines, but the filling of all kinds of electronic and paper forms of reporting, the development of almost unused electronic educational resources and educational and methodological complexes, began to occupy.

The authoritarian style prevailed in the university management, which resulted in a number of ill -conceived solutions. For example, in recent years, the faculties of history, philosophy, journalism and sociology have moved twice from a building to a building in different parts of the city. The movement of the Faculty of Journalism and Sociology in a week in the middle of the semester - without preliminary discussion and preparation - from a university town to a remote building, explained the need to provide the faculty with more space.

At the same time, the main reason lay on the surface: the liberated area in the historical complex of the university was immediately occupied by managerial structures. The rector was already explained by the re -relocation of journalism and sociology departments by the fact that the building where the journalism departments were located after the first crossing, "was not a very constructed system for transmitting information on fiber." Was this circumstance it was impossible to find out and take into account in advance?

2. Demonstration "Points of Success" . Like the Russian power elite, creating the “demonstration points” (Kazan, Sochi), which sharply contrast with the surrounding depressive space, the leadership of the KFU has created and intensively exploits this kind of modern analogues of the Potemkin villages. The “high guests” usually show the Institute of Fundamental Medicine and Biology and the Institute of Physics, but they will never be taken to the building of the department of history, where there is not a single audience equipped with a multimedia projector, or to the building of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, which has been in need of repair for many years.

Often, “demonstration points” are constructed due to the spaces vital for the university. So, instead of the development of the Lobachevsky University Library, one of its four floors was taken to arrange the meetings of the Board of Trustees and the “Corporate University of Sberbank”, and a conference room was arranged on the site of the University of History of the University.

KFU actively joined the “game in the ratings”, which allowed to receive and master multimillion -dollar amounts within the framework of development programs and increasing competitiveness. However, if you carefully analyze the QS rating, which is regularly indicated by the leadership of the KFU, it is found that the university has not yet been able to regain the positions lost in 2011 (in 2010, KFU took 501–550th place in the general rating of QS, in 2011-601st+, in 2012-601–650s, in the 2013, in 2013, in 2014-551–600th).

Attempts to increase the place in the ranking were sometimes made extremely rude methods, in particular through administrative pressure on teachers and employees in order to increase the number of publications in magazines indexed by international databases. This led to the appearance of hundreds of articles in pseudo -scientific “garbage” magazines publishing texts for a fee.

3. Relief of criticism . The university leadership is extremely negative about criticism addressing to its channels. The employment contract with the teacher included the provision that the employee is obliged to "not perform actions that could directly or indirectly negatively affect the business reputation and the image of the KFU." The Kazan University newspaper turned into an official publication, highlighting the exclusively “successful activity” of the leadership of the university (pictures that depict the current rector, in some numbers were placed on almost all the bands of the newspaper).

The changes that have occurred with the rhetoric of the university leadership are characteristic. If in December 2011 the Rector of KFU claimed: “The University was always a stronghold of free people, since only a free person can create”, then in December 2014 his statements were completely different: “We must seek from our young people a sharp rejection of the obvious and hidden ill -wishers of our state, representatives of the fifth column, parasitizing to please their difficulties and mistakes” (fragmentation Speech at an expanded meeting of the Academic Council).

4. The gap between managerial structures , on the one hand , and the teacher and educational - auxiliary personnel , on the other . As in society as a whole, in Kazan University there is a sharp polarization of the provision of leadership and ordinary teachers and employees. I can judge the salary of teachers by my own position. Being an assistant professor and doctor of sciences (position above average at the university), I get one rate of about 30 thousand rubles. per month.

Associates, senior teachers and assistants receive significantly less. The salaries of laboratory assistants remain extremely low and sometimes even with allowances do not exceed 10 thousand rubles. Meanwhile, in May 2014, the rector stated that the average salary of all personnel at the university, including technicians and laboratory assistants, was 34.2 thousand rubles. per month, and the faculty-46.9 thousand rubles. The revenues of the rector himself in 2014 amounted to 8.9 million rubles ...

Another touch to the situation: the KFU rector has been repeatedly noticed in business class salons for air travel, the costs of which can be multimillion-dollar amounts annually. At the same time, ordinary teachers of Kazan University are constantly faced with significant difficulties and restrictions in resolving issues about allocating funds for business trips. The main question that arises in this context is also similar to a key all-Russian problem: how did the complete submission of teachers and employees of the University of Kazan, appointed to the rector without any organized resistance?

Over the past five years, only a few collective protest actions have been held at Kazan Federal University: against the reorganization of the faculty of Tatar philology and history, the relocation of the Faculty of Journalism and Sociology, and the reduction of teachers; But all of them were organized and conducted by students. The teachers are suppressed, intimidated, demoralized and divided. Obviously, the metamorphosis of the university was predetermined by the state of the university community, its weakness and unpreparedness to jointly defend the norms of academic culture and the interests of the development of science.

A change in the situation at Kazan University is possible, in my opinion, only if a return to the rector’s election occurs in Russia. In another scenario, the current university east -line will reproduce itself and its own features, continue to “successfully master the means” and impede the development of the university.