Yakov Mirkin: "Explosion of control"

“At a university I know, they install CCTV cameras in classrooms to spy on professors during classes. The best way to experience humiliation today is to become a university person,” writes Yakov Mirkin, an economist and head of the international capital markets department at IMEMO RAS, on his Facebook page.

“In higher education, as in all “budget” ones, there is an explosion of control, supervision, reporting, punishment, preoccupation with an insane number of standards and documentation, attempts to squeeze into rigid technologies, to take up the “second half of the day.” To make those who must think and profess , - employees, servants.

Crime and punishment, and also control (video, entry-exit) as ways of existence at the university for those who should think and be free in the sense of who they are and what they should do. With low incomes, of course.

Forecast? Shame. Bitter regret about academic freedom. There were more of them even in Soviet times. The departure from universities of all those who think, who are free, who still remain in them out of a moral duty to teach and create ideas.”