“Optimizing” Higher Education in Russia

2. Overview of State Policy

a. The Soviet Period

University teachers were held in high regard in Soviet society, and university teaching was a coveted profession. In that relatively egalitarian system (even considering the privileges of the nomenklatura), a dotsent, the equivalent of a North-American associate professor, the most numerous category of teaching personnel, earned approximately double the average wage and could expect to obtain an apartment. A professor, a title awarded on the basis of major published research, earned double that amount.1 Performance bonuses, beyond the guaranteed part of the salary, were relatively small and stable.

While some research and publishing activity was generally expected, most universities, with the exception of a few élite institutions, focused on teaching, with more advanced research being conducted in the network of institutes belonging to the Academy of Science. Accordingly, while the teaching load could be relatively heavy—300 or more academic hours2 for a dostent (but 120-150 for a professor)—it was manageable. In some institutions, such as Moscow State University, every fourth semester was free for the purpose of research.

Looking back to the Soviet period from 2017, professor of philosophy V. Afanas’eva of Saratov State University recalled: “In the 1980s, when I was pondering a career, to become a professor was not only interesting and respected, but practical too. Indeed, a professor was doing work that he loved. On the face of it, he did not work too much—it looked like a few hours a week. And he received the wage of a Norilsk miner.3 He could allow himself to buy a cooperative apartment in the city’s centre and a dacha on the Volga. And he came to the cashier for vacation pay with a small suitcase, since the money would not fit into a briefcase. Professors were respected, honoured; legends were told about them; each one was unique, irreplaceable, and therefore beloved.”4

There was no concept of tenure in the Soviet Union, but once hired, university teachers could expect to keep their jobs for life, as long as they conformed politically. Party membership, not easy to obtain for intellectuals in the later Soviet period (unlike workers, who sometimes resisted insistent invitations to join), was obligatory in politically sensitive disciplines, such as economics, history, or philosophy, which were under strict ideological control. Sociology, banned under Stalin, was resurrected after his death, but mainly as an applied (fact-gathering and analysis), rather than theoretical discipline. Courses in Soviet Marxism and party history were obligatory for students in all disciplines.

Power in the educational system, as in all social and political institutions, was highly centralized. Organization and financing were decided and administered centrally. In universities and in the more specialized institutes of higher learning subordinated to the various economic ministries, a strong basic education was combined with specialized training that prepared students for future employment. Tuition was free, and students who performed well received stipends, which could easily be supplemented by summer jobs. Employment after graduation in one’s field of specialization was guaranteed—the state’s job assignment was mandatory.5

Teaching personnel in institutions of higher learning, unless they were members of the party committee or held administrative positions, did not participate in important decisions. The most significant decisions were taken centrally beyond the university, including the disciplines and subjects to be taught, admission quotas, educational standards, workloads and remuneration.

The Trade Union of Workers of Education6, Higher Schools, and Scientific Institutions embraced all the employees of these areas, including the administrators. It functioned in practice as an arm of the state and of the local university or institute’s administration. The main focus of their activities was the administration of social benefits. After 1985, especially under Gorbachev’s perestroika, central state control of education was somewhat relaxed, but the union never assumed a significant degree of independence from the university and state authorities, nor did its basic functions change.

The October Revolution opened and greatly broadened access to higher education for the children of workers and peasants, and also for their adult members. And while the state clearly emphasized the role of education in the formation of the skilled labour force required for economic development, it also framed education’s mission in humanistic terms, as favoring the spiritual development of individuals and of society as a whole.7 The downside of this professed humanism was the imposed, crude “ideologization” of higher education, which included mandatory courses in “marxism-leninism,” the history of the Communist Party, and the like.

Soviet parents often invested considerable energy and financial resources in their offspring’s accession to higher education, which was a prestigious and widely-shared goal. Evening and extramural higher education was also widely developed, the law providing special conditions for working students enrolled in these programmes. Students in higher education were generally motivated to learn, since at least equally well-paid jobs not requiring higher degrees were available in industry. For those enrolled in full-time programmes, the university years became a cherished period of their lives, and the friendships established then often endured long afterwards.

b. The “Wild Nineties”8

The decade under Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the newly-independent Russian Federation, came to be known popularly as the “wild9 nineties.” This was a period of what Marx had termed “primitive accumulation”—the forced dispossession of toilers of their means of subsistence. The latter, according to the constitution inherited from the Soviet Union, were the collective property of the nation as a whole. The rapid privatization of the economy in the course of the 1990s assumed the form of massive corruption and theft. These were not only tolerated, but actively promoted by the government. 10

Formally, the new Russian state was, and still is, a democracy. But since Yeltsin’s coup d’état and artillery bombardment of the Supreme Soviet (the dominant state institution at the time) in October 1993, the executive branch of the government has been free of any significant outside control. Under this “managed democracy”, the state’s tolerance of individual and collective freedoms (which remain, nevertheless, significant on the background of most of Russian history) is conditional upon their not limiting the government’s freedom of action in matters that it considers important.

“Shock therapy,” a policy of forced, rapid transition to capitalism, actively promoted by the G-7 and the international financial institutions that they dominate, thrust Russia into one of the deepest and most prolonged depressions experienced by an industrial society.11 Throughout the decade, the government was determined to stay this course, regardless of the social and economic costs to the mass of the population, which was unable to mount effective resistance.

By 1998, real GDP had fallen to around a quarter of its 1992 level. Popular incomes plummeted, along with the state’s social spending. Government expenditure on higher education as a part of GDP fell in this period from 1.21% to 0.040%; funding per student decreased by 70% compared to the end of the 1980s.12 Besides a catastrophic reduction of teachers’ salaries, institutions of higher learning struggled to survive by attracting various forms of non-state funding: tuition-paying students, commercial use of real-estate under their control, the sale of services, grants from private sources. These activities were legalized by the 1992 Law on Education, which also permitted the establishment of private universities.

In these conditions, the centralized control of education of the Soviet period necessarily gave way to broad decentralization and so expanded autonomy of educational establishments, as there was no other way for them to survive.13 It was not until well into the next decade that the state began to intervene actively again in higher education.

For university teachers, the freedom to teach, to conduct research and to publish was the main positive outcome of the Soviet Union’s demise. While the government still formally required its approval of programmes, in practice teachers were free to teach as they wished. “It was a period of full freedom—you did what you wanted,” recalled an economics teacher at Moscow State University. “It was the most interesting and creative time. I wrote a textbook that passed through three editions. There were a lot of different views, discussions, arguments. It was interesting!” “From an intellectual point of view, the 1990s were the best years of my life,” recalled a philosophy teacher at St. Petersburg’s Mining University. “We obtained access to books and translations and we could teach and say whatever we liked, without fear.”

This new intellectual freedom had the most meaning for teachers of the humanities and social sciences, since the natural sciences had not been subject to significant ideological control. But changes in this period also allowed a measure of teacher participation in university affairs, notably in the election of department chairpersons, faculty deans, and rectors, as well as in decisions regarding hiring and promotion of colleagues.14

The early 1990s also saw the introduction of employment contracts. Formally, teaching positions were to be filled and five-year contracts awarded through open competitions, on whose basis departments made recommendations to the institution’s elected academic council. In practice, however, teachers in this period could count on keeping their positions. Departments also obtained a decisive voice in decisions regarding promotions.

The dark side of this newly-found freedom and opportunities to participate in university affairs was a dramatic decline in salaries. The average salary of a university teacher in 2000 was a mere 1,226 rubles (approximately $US 40).15 Moreover, the payment of wages and salaries in the 1990s was often delayed, sometimes for weeks and even months, this in conditions of hyperinflation without indexation. A Moscow teacher recalled that “Salaries were so insultingly low that they barely covered the cost of transportation to and from the university.” Many with better options simply left the university, contributing to Russia’s massive brain drain.

Those who remained survived by various means, including depending on their spouse’s income or by renting out their apartment and living in their dacha. But the main means of survival was to take on additional teaching, sometimes in one’s own institution, but more often at other universities. This was possible because many teachers had left the profession, while the number of students enrolled in higher education expanded rapidly from the mid 1990s, almost tripling by 2008 (facilitated by the introduction of tuition-paying admission in public university and the expansion of private universities), after which their numbers began to fall.16 Many teachers earned money by tutoring high-school students for university entrance exams, while others took on consulting and other part-time work in private business. This additional work took a serious toll on the quality of teachers’ lives and their teaching, but it was more or less tolerable since the official teaching load was still relatively moderate at that time. Outside of the larger metropolitan areas, however, opportunities for earning extra money were much more limited.

The decline in salaries was accompanied by a decline in the prestige of the university teaching profession. And teachers’ own self-esteem suffered from their poverty and inability to do conscientious work. An overall decline in academic standards occurred, especially evident in the low quality of many dissertations: thesis defences became less demanding, often assuming a more-or-less formal character, without serious debate or criticism. Plagiarism became widespread, with various high government officials and parliamentary deputies in search of academic degrees showing the way.17

The attitudes of young people toward higher education also changed. In Soviet times, students often explained their pursuit of higher education in idealistic terms—a desire for self-realization and to contribute to social progress. In the 1990s, however, making money was at the fore, as a university diploma came to be viewed primarily as a means to finding a better-paying job.18 Concern for the quality of that education was, at best, a secondary consideration, an attitude often shared by employers.19 An additional motivation for male students was the desire to avoid, or at least postpone, military service.

Because lower-school teachers suffered similar economic hardship and were also forced to take on additional work, the level of preparation of students for university studies declined sharply. An economics teacher at Moscow State University recalled about this period: “They had apparently not learned about society in high school. It shocked me. I began by talking about simple things, and these young people quickly pulled out their notebooks to take notes. So there was some desire to learn. But they lacked a foundation. I had the impression that they had been completely deprived of knowledge. This was the middle 1990s.”

When the Soviet Union came to an end in a “revolution from above,” university teachers, as practically all the rest of Russian society, lacked traditions and experience of independent organization to defend their interests. The newly acquired freedom and opportunities to participate in university governance fell into their hands without struggle. And at once teachers were thrust into a struggle for physical survival, a condition completely unfamiliar to Soviet citizens. Indeed, an unstated goal of “shock therapy” was in that way to prevent significant popular resistance.20 And it succeeded well in the case of university teachers. As for the Trade Union of Employees of Education and Science, a corporatist organization inherited from the Soviet Union, it continued to rubber stamp the decisions of government and university authorities.

c. 2000-2012: Return of the State

The first decade of the new millennium began with the election of Vladimir Putin to the presidency of Russia. He was Yeltsin’s handpicked successor, a man who, among other things, could be relied upon to protect Yeltsin and his “family” from prosecution.

That decade saw the state’s return to an active role in educational policy, made possible by the economy’s emergence from its lengthy depression. There followed a decade of rapid economic growth, thanks in large part to a steep and prolonged rise in the price of oil, which eventually tripled. The recovery also benefitted from the dramatic fall of the ruble in 1998 (a devaluation that the IMF had consistently opposed) that cut imports in half, strongly boosting domestic production.

The state’s budget for education increased substantially from the desperately low levels of the 1990s, doubling by 2004 and growing even faster in subsequent years. As a percent of GDP in constant rubles, federal spending on higher education rose from 0.3% to 0.7% in 2000-2004 and another 140% in 2004-09%.21 Total expenditure from both public and private sources at all levels of education increased from 2.9% of GDP to 4.6% between 2000 and 2011. But even so, state spending on education was the fourth lowest among OECD members, well below the average of 6.1%.22

During his first electoral campaign, Putin did not present anything resembling an economic programme. But the appointment of German Gref, author of the “Gref Plan,” as Minister of Economic Development and Trade foretold a strongly neoliberal social policy. In higher education, the government contemplated replacing direct state funding based on itemized budgets with vouchers that would be distributed to students on the basis of their scores in unified high-school finishing exams. As consumers of educational services, students would use their vouchers to apply to universities, forcing the latter to compete for these clients. But experiments with this programme drew criticism from virtually all quarters, not least rectors, and were abandoned in 2005, although unified state high-school finishing exams were generalized in 2009.23 That innovation reduced the widespread corruption that had surrounded university admissions and broadened choice for high-school graduates. But the negative impact of the reform on the quality of high-school education, whose final two years were geared to the state exams, continues to be decried by educators, as is the shift in pedagogical emphasis from instilling knowledge to prioritizing the acquisition of “competences.”

Although the voucher system was abandoned, the neoliberal orientation in higher-education policy became increasingly pronounced in Putin’s second four-year term. University funding was largely based on the number of state-supported students enrolled. The Federal Programme for the Development of Education of 2005 clearly designated the labour market as the leading driver of educational policy, an orientation that only grew stronger over time. The promotion of personal and social development barely received mention. The sought-after “national idea” for post-Soviet Russia had at last apparently been found: international competitiveness. That document also introduced the term “optimization,” a goal whose application in the social sphere would have a major negative impact on the condition of university teachers in the following decade. 24