Abstract
The expansion of higher education leads to a number of consequences. The case of Russia has both specific features and features common to processes taking place in other countries. This paper offers a retrospective description of educational system manipulation and changes that have occurred due to general transformations in Russia. The new labor market required qualified specialists. At the same time, employers needed a significant number of more or less socialized young people, and these skills are considered to be acquired as a result of studying in a higher education institution (HEI). Both demands from the labor market were transmitted to families, who, in turn, translated demands to the educational system. The educational scope responded adequately to demand from families. HEIs underwent differentiation: some provided knowledge, along with socialization, confirmed by degrees; others just gave degrees plus socialization. Enrollment in HEIs grew continuously and very rapidly. Two types of consequence of the resulting situation are considered here. Using the findings of 50 years’ research, it is shown that increased HEI enrollment has led to greater uniformity in aspirations for education among young people and to their broader participation in higher education. However, this has not proved conducive to lessening social inequality in higher education. In addition, studies of HEI graduates in the labor market testify that the growth of HEI differentiation has raised inequality in the labor market.
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Notes
By the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars dated August 2, 1918 “On the rules of admission to higher education” (Decree 1918), everyone was granted the right to enter universities without submitting an education certificate. As workers’ and peasants’ training was insufficient, the need arose to organize special courses. By the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars dated September 17, 1920 “On Workers’ Departments” (Decree 1920), the system of workers’ departments was enacted. These departments admitted workers, peasants and people delegated by industrial enterprises, collective farms, trade unions, and Party and Soviet organizations. Students had the same status as working people and got state scholarships. Graduates had the right to enter higher education institutions without examination.
Russian schools provide a nine-year lower secondary education (ISCED level 2) program and an eleven-year upper secondary education (ISCED level 3) program.
Schools in Russia provide full-time and part-time education. Part-time education is designed for those who have a job; it usually provides an evening program (it is known as “evening school”) but the program may be realized at other times (in the morning or during the day), depending on students’ availability at their places of employment. The proportion of part-time school graduates is decreasing: It was 9.3 % in 2000 and 5.9 % in 2014 (Indicators 2016, p 126). Besides, the new version of the Federal Law “On Education in the Russian Federation” (Federal Law 2012) provides for home schooling and self-education. It also makes provision for external graduation.
“The Law on the strengthening of connection between the school and life and the further development of the system of public education in the USSR” of December 24, 1958 (Law 1958).
Russian higher education institutions may now be called a university (for example, Lomonosov Moscow State University), an academy (for example, the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration), an institute (for example, Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages, Voronezh State Institute of the Arts) or a school (for example the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences).
The question of education quality is not addressed here, since the matter under discussion is the differentiation of HEIs into those providing knowledge and skills and those providing diplomas. The point is that a discussion of education quality can be undertaken only in respect of those educational institutions that provide education (HEIs in the first of the categories listed belong here). It would be wrong to consider education quality in respect of the second category as they do not provide education: they do not prepare specialists in particular professions but award diplomas that allow their graduates to get jobs (for instance, an engineer’s diploma that allows the holder to obtain employment as a retailer, secretary, etc., that is, in occupations where a qualification in engineering is not needed at all). Moreover, the notions of prestige and elite and non-elite sectors are in all likelihood applicable to HEIs of the first category only and therefore are not discussed in this paper. (It should be kept in mind, too, that the prestige of an HEI and education quality are not directly related; prestige is determined by a number of factors besides education quality).
The study was carried out in nine Russian regions. Apart from regional quotas, the actual numbers of students in educational institutions were taken into account: 500 ninth-grade school students, 600 eleventh-grade secondary school students, 500 vocational school students, and 600 college seniors were polled.
Russian colleges are specialized secondary education institutions that train mainly semi-professional white-collar workers.
Vocational schools train skilled workers for industry and agriculture, as well as service workers.
Russian HEIs provide: full-time programs; part-time programs that combine distance and classroom learning (they may be conditionally—for the purposes of discussion—named part-time combined); and part-time programs that are mainly based on distance education (they may be named conditionally—again for the purposes of discussion—part-time distance). HEIs also provide external graduation.
The research data were combined. During the first stage, the questionnaire survey was carried out in full-time secondary schools. During their final months of schooling, upper-grade students were asked their opinion about occupations and about their wishes and expectations for their future profession and education. This was accompanied by detailed personal sociodemographic information about each student. During the second stage, about six months later, information was gathered on the life trajectory of each student after graduation and following his or her first steps outside school.
The research was carried out in Novosibirsk Region and other Siberian regions, in several regions of Central, Northern and Southern Russia and in several republics of the former USSR. In this text, data from the research conducted in Novosibirsk Region in 1963, 1983, 1994, 2004 and 2013 are used (at intervals of about 10 years; intervals were due to our financial and other capabilities). Novosibirsk Region is a developed industrial and agricultural area, and its capital is one of the largest cities in Russia. The samples were developed in such a way that young people from different groups (upper-grade students of full-time secondary schools in the regional center, cities, towns and villages) were represented proportionally to the share of each group in the total number of students in the region’s secondary schools in a specific year. The database for each year includes information on 4.5 % or more of respondents.
The social structure of upper-grade students (and, later, secondary school graduates) was analyzed in whole groups; status was determined by their parents’ positions with respect to authority, financial standing, occupation, employment and education level. The following groups were studied: children of administrators of high, middle and minor ranks (regional, party, industrial and other administrators); children of specialists (highly qualified employees, excluding administrators)—HEI qualified people; children of white-collar workers—office workers, employees with general or specialized secondary education; children of blue-collar workers—industrial and agricultural workers, employees using physical labor which does not require a high level of education. This type of aggregating has a long-standing tradition in Russian society and sociology.
1994 secondary school graduation: 891,295 (Federal State Statistics Service data); admission to HEI full-time departments: 396,000 (Statistics of Russian Education). 2013 secondary school graduation: 735,200 (Education 2014, p. 235); admission to HEIs full-time departments: 664,500 (Education 2014, p. 360).
This category did not exist in the Soviet period.
The interview was conducted as part of the “Development and testing of instruments for monitoring of continuing education in the regions of Russian Federation” research project, conducted in 2005–2006. The project was initiated by the National Training Foundation and carried out by the author and colleagues at the Center for Human Resources of the Russian Governmental Academy of National Economy (Konstantinovskiy et al. 2007).
Valuation of Russian HEI graduate employment is used in the rankings created by the All-Russia Public Organization Business Russia, the National Research University Higher School of Economics and other HEIs, the rating agency RAEX (Expert RA), Kommersant Publishers and other organizations. Graduate employment is considered in combination with other indicators (the composition and quality of the teaching staff, the number of foreign students, the volume of scientific research and publications, etc.) along with the results of surveys of teachers, graduates, and others.
RAEX (Expert RA)—Russia's largest international rating agency with a 17-year history.
The purpose of the rating is to assess the ability of HEIs to provide a high quality of knowledge and skills. The rating reflects the integral evaluation of graduate training quality based on statistical parameters and the views of employers, representatives of academic and scientific communities, as well as students and graduates (125 HEIs and more than 7500 respondents took part in the 2014 polls).
Superjob.ru is the largest recruitment portal: 550,000 employers; 6 million job seeker resumes; 180,000 job vacancies per month; 10 million visitors monthly.
Researchers were inspired by the statement made by Andrei Fursenko, former Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, at a meeting of the Board of the Russian Union of Rectors: “Indicators of the quality of education should not be the number of rooms in an HEI, but the successful job placement of its graduates and the level of salary they receive.” The source of information is more than 1 million resumes of graduates from 1353 departments (60 lines of training) in 420 HEIs within five to 10 years after graduation. This particular database represents active HEI graduates who wish to work in their specialization.
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Acknowledgments
The paper is prepared in the Department of Sociology of Education of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Siberian surveys 1994, 2004, 2013 and data analysis have been realized with the support of the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation. The federal survey 2014 and data analysis have been realized with the support of the Russian Science Foundation.
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Konstantinovskiy, D.L. Expansion of higher education and consequences for social inequality (the case of Russia). High Educ 74, 201–220 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0043-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0043-7