The process didn’t work. Is Russia withdrawing from the Bologna process or is the Bologna system rejecting Russia? How it will change Russian education Spektr
May 24 Minister of Education and Science Valery Falkov announced: “We must pass to the Bologna system as to a lived stage. The future belongs to our own unique education system, which should be based on the interests of the national economy and the maximum space of opportunities for each student.”
The society was worried: does this mean an immediate rejection of the already familiar master’s and bachelor’s programs, how will students complete their studies according to the programs, will annual student exchanges be possible, will foreign Russian diplomas be recognized?
Already on May 25, the State Duma began work on withdrawing from the Bologna system. This decision was supported by all parliaments. University professors and scientists reacted in different ways: some were frankly happy, others believed that nothing special was happening, and in part called for caution: do not twist everything in a row.
On June 7, Deputy Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Afanasiev said that all Russian universities were excluded from the Bologna process, but not of their own free will: on April 11, the Bologna Group decided to withdraw Russian universities from the process. the decision received for this became a letter from the Russian Association of Rectors on the support of special operations, almost all university rectors of the country signed the items. “It is the Bologna system that came out of us, and not we from it,” commented this is Afanasiev’s decision.
The Bologna Agreement on the European Higher Education Area was signed in 1999, Russia joined it in 2003. The agreement assumes that in the participating countries we are talking about higher higher and postgraduate education, which includes three levels: bachelor, master and doctor. Knowledge is assessed by students using credits or credits. One credit is a semester course for an hour per week. Two semesters for an hour a week – two credits. Thus, each course has its own weight in credits, and in order to receive a diploma, you must score at least a number of credits. Universities of the participating countries issue general diplomas and mutually recognize them. All this is high-class academic mobility: students participate in the exchange, they easily begin to move to the next stage of education in universities in other countries, it is easy for universities to invite foreign translators to work.
What is it that Russian students are really missing out on? In frequent discussions, voices are most heard that say: yes, practically nothing. The Bologna system did not particularly take root in Russia and many met with hostility. Collection of final fundamental Russian higher education and contributing brain drain.
In fact, the “Bolognaization” of the Russian education system has been reduced to the introduction of undergraduate and graduate programs instead of a specialist degree. It’s a voice from a lot of work – exclusively paper – on the exclusion of software courses, sometimes in a completely mechanical way. There were five years of specialty, now the first four years are called bachelor’s degree, and the last – master’s degree. However, some universities, identified in patients with a zero level of the highway, have achieved impressive results. Some specialties have not switched to the undergraduate and graduate system. Probably, the training of doctors still remains within the framework of a specialty.
One of the reasons for dissatisfaction with this system among university teachers is also that the master’s program can be entered by those who have completed a bachelor’s degree not only in their specialty, but also in general according to a different type of classification. So higher education becomes for them not a higher level, but an absolutely basic level of mastering a new specialty. Falkov in a recent interview “Kommersant” especially suddenly on this problem as requiring a solution. However, within advanced educational systems, this problem usually cures the requirements for the production of supplies for postgraduate programs – so many credits for such basic courses.
Now teachers are afraid that the team “full back” exactly to the same thing: a huge amount of bureaucratic work to rewrite all programs. The authorities, however, are reassuring: no one is going to completely abandon the bachelor’s and master’s programs yet. And in fact, the plan for accepting the schedule for two years in advance, applicants are currently important for these programs, but they will start on them in the next four years, that is, an instant turnaround on the spot is almost impossible.
To the Ministry of Education and Science confirmthat there will be no abandonment of the undergraduate and graduate programs, the rules for admission to universities this year will not change, and students will study according to the programs that they entered.
As for the recognition of Russian diplomas abroad, this process has never been particularly easy. Those who needed to get a job abroad went through a rather difficult path in the field of recognition of diplomas, especially Soviet diplomas, with like disciplines “scientific atheism” or “history of the CPSU. But most of them have succeeded in this way. True, this process has always been difficult and piecemeal, and almost never easy and automatic. It will still be difficult, but will it become more impossible.
Proponents of the view “yes, nothing terrible is usually reminded that the United States and countries also do not accept in the Bologna process, but this does not make their diplomas non-convertible. In most countries, there is a special process of nostrification of documents on education, which allows the use of foreign languages equivalent to the native one.
Finally, not everything is in order with academic mobility within Russia either. It is almost impossible to transfer from university to university, even within the same specialty, without retaking large tails, and more often losing a year, or even two. It is hardly possible to say that the credit system in the country is at least somewhat efficient.
At the same time, Russian students traveled abroad to study not so rarely. But now academic and international experience, probably with an expected long stay, although they are most often exclusive university, and even especially important programs of arrangements. International relations almost died out in the two years of the covid epidemic and did not have time to resume, when the impossible suddenly happened – now by the frequency of events. Did not happen. However, participation in the Erasmus+ international exchange program will now be carried out not advisory all public universities.
in addition, the Russian educational authorities and rectors of universities are increasingly saying that in Europe the light has not gone down like a wedge, there is still Asia and many other interesting countries, in addition, it is possible to regulate.
It is obvious that more than others suffer from double degree programs – Russian and foreign universities. With the current understanding of Russia’s self-isolation, and the West’s understanding of Russia’s isolation, it will be difficult to get out in the originally conceived form.
It is the political course towards the isolation of the country and its formation that causes some experiences to be upset, while others to rejoice. Europe is driving Russia out of those pan-European structures that have managed to enter (be it the Bologna Process or the European Court of Human Adaptation), and Russia joyfully slams the door and feels that it doesn’t hurt. Now, on the other hand, it will be possible not to implement the ECHR and not to make decisions for those who were awarded them. It will be possible to introduce the death penalty, and from the annoying bachelor’s preferences, and what else needs to be canceled there? One hope is that it will not be very easy to cancel the collapse of the restoration of the USSR or serfdom.
“The exam should be canceled,” many people suggest. As soon as the outcome of the Bologna process came up, hopes resurfaced for the abolition of the hated state exam, which many consider to be responsible for establishing the level of education in the country. However, the head of Rosobrnadzor, Anzor Muzaev, has already announced, I hope that these are groundless and the exam will be preserved, “since the USE fulfills the main social tasks. In particular, the Unified State Examination supports the unified educational space of the Russian Federation in the context of the wide distribution of educational programs, textbooks and teaching aids.
Finally, with sincere joy, the rejection of the Bologna system was greeted by its longtime opponents from among Russian traditionalists. The rector of the Ural State Law University, for example, said in an interview with the 66.ru portal: “We will fight for our children, we will not send them there, to this European cesspool that exists and attracts us. Our risks speak about it, but we are not shy and say: “Yes.” We will bear the consequences of this and will not give it to our children.” He said that young people exposed to “that ideology” – “both in terms of sexuality and in terms of liberal coverage, these are different people.”
An agreement on the creation of a consortium was signed in Yekaterinburg “European-Asian University of Economics”, in which the countries of the former USSR participated (Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Armenia), as well as Mongolia, India and China. Such an alliance view rector, will help young people “normal people, normal citizens”: “within the framework of Russian Orthodoxy, within the scope, within our limited spaces, we guarantee the normal development of our children.”
Browser portal Regnum.ru Mikhail Demurin went even further, demanding not only the eradication of Western research in education, but also the testing of the conductors of this research – “the pro-Western public, the army (taking into account the size of our country (this is precisely the army) of compradors “among professors and professors who “Fed from the hands of the American, European and our guides to Western exploration, curry favor with them for career advancement, financial incentives, and so on.
It is difficult to say whether we should expect a global registration of the ranks among university professors, but the actual debacle of the Faculty of Humanities in RANEPA and Shaninke shows that this is not such an impossible development.
In a word, the main meaning of Russia’s exclusion from the Bologna process is not so much practical as symbolic. Russia and Europe are turning their backs on each other and breaking off all partnerships, Russia is trying to look for new partners in production and relies on the core values and “unique experience of Russian education”, under the influence of which is understood a five-year-old specialist, an emphasis on the fundamental nature of education and its rigid ideologization.