Education and social stability in Russia: An essay

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Volumn 27, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 5-18

  Heyneman, Stephen P ^a  

^a WORLD BANK   (United States)

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EID: 85064292156     PISSN: 03057925     EISSN: 14693623     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0305792970270102     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. The views in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the World Bank or any of its affiliated institutions
2. Anweiler, O., 1992. Some historical aspects of educational change in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education. special issue on Education and Economic Change in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, 2, 29-39. Eklof B, & Dneprov, E. 1993 Democracy in the Russian School: the Reform movement since 1984 Boulder CO>Westview Press Kimage, D. 1992 Russian Libraries in Transition: an anthology of Glasnost literature Jefferson NC McFarlane. Medlin, W.K. 1960 The teaching of history in Soviet Schools: a study in methods G. Z. F. Bereday J. Pennar The Politics of Soviet Education New York Praeger
3. Heyneman, S.P., 1995. Russia: education in the transition, Washington, DC: ECA Country Department HI.
4. Dorn, D., 1994. Teachers’ associations in Russia, Washington, DC: World Bank, mimeo.
5. Other countries in Central and Eastern Europe with similarly out-dated structures experienced similar student declines in higher education. Between 1975 and 1985 the number of post-secondary students declined in Bulgaria at a rate of 0.2% per year: in Hungary by 0.8% per year; in Romania by 0.3% per year; in Poland by 2.2% per year. The ratio of higher education students to the general population declined in Russia by 6% between 1970 and 1988. By contrast, during the same period that ratio increased in France by 36%, in Norway by 43%, in the USA by 49% and in Germany by 133%
6. Eighty per cent of Russian pre-schools were owned and operated through the enterprises. With their privatization or with the decline in their incomes, many of these ‘social assets’ have been divested to the local municipalities or closed. There were 88,000 pre-school facilities in Russia in 1991 but only 78,000 in 1993
7. In addition to the number of engineering specializations, there are also broad differences between market and planned economies in the objectives of engineering education. In planned economies emphasis tends to be on scientific principles -- heat transfer, energy, durability. The major concern is, ‘Will it work?’ In market economies training tends to include principles of ‘concurrent engineering’. This requires students to raise questions which may have been unnecessary in Russia. Can it be produced efficiently? Can it be marketed easily? What are the terms of its copyright? Is it environmentally sound? Would it be profitable as an investment?
8. Higher education institutions may experiment with new curricula without central permission, but after an experimental period, the new curriculum must be certified by federal authorities. While the tradition of central curricular control is widely known in Western Europe, the size, economic diversity, sectoral segmentation and heterogeneity of finance raise new questions about its viability in the Russian Federation.
9. De Groff, J., and De Groff, J., eds. 1994. “ Education Policy in Russia and Its Constitutional Aspects (Leuven/Amersfoort, Acco Publishers) ”. In Comments on the Law on Education of the Russian Federation, Leuven/Amersfoort, Acco Publishers. 1994
10. Hanson, P., 1994. The center versus periphery in Russian economic policy,. RFE/RL Research Report, 3: 23–28.
11. Wallich, C.I., 1992. “ Fiscal Decentralization and Inter-Governmental Relations in Russia ”. In Russia and the Challenge of Fiscal Federalism Washington DC World Bank, Edited by: Wallich, C.I., Washington, DC: World Bank. 1994
12. Mann, D., and Briller, V., eds. 1994. “ In a 1994 sample of Russian school directors, only a third knew which governmental body was currently in charge of financing the school which they were managing ”. In Russian School Directors: problems and proposals, Washington, DC: World Bank, mimeo.
13. Heyneman, S.P., 1997. Educational choice in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: a review essay. Education Economics, forthcoming.
14. The most important clients for an education system seem to express the most dissatisfaction. On the question of whether the curriculum provided knowledge which was ‘useful’, 22% of the students, 23% of the parents and 31% of the teachers respond ‘yes’. This compares to 54, 71 and 77% for similar groups who are asked the identical question in The Netherlands. When asked whether schooling should prepare a student for higher education, 59% of the Russian pupils answer ‘yes'; but 28% of the parents and 15% of the teachers respond similarly. In sum, there is a significant of view -- associated more with age than with profession -- as to the purposes of schooling. See Mann & Briller, op. cit., n. 10.
15. Broxup, M., 1994. “ Islam and atheism in the North Caucasus ”. In Education and Society in the New Russia, Edited by: Jones, A., Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe Publishers.
16. Grant, N., 1981. “ The education of linguistic minorities in the USSR ”. In World Yearbook of Education, 67–84. London: Evans Brothers.
17. Kirkwood, M., 1991. Glasnost: the ‘nationality question’ and Soviet language policy,. Soviet Studies, 43: 61–81.
18. Kravetz, N., 1978. Education of ethnic and national minorities in the USSR: a report on current developments,. Comparative Education, 10: 193–200.
19. Shadrikov, V., 1993. “ Ethnic, cultural and national requirements in the education policy of the former Soviet Union ”. In Nationalism in Education, Edited by: Schleicher, K., 135–151. Sonderdurck: Peter Lang Publishers.
20. Shorish, M.M., 1994. “ The Uzbeks and Tajiks: conflict resolution and the Soviet experience ”. In The Russian Dilemma: the ethnic aftermath, Edited by: Dash Cuttack, P. L., 53–73. India: Arya Prakashan.
21. Floridid, A.U., 1960. “ Antireligious education of Soviet youth ”. In The Politics of Soviet Education, Edited by: Bereday, G. Z. F., and Pennar, J., 89–100. New York: Praeger.
22. Gellner, E., 1991. Civil society in historical context,. International Social Science Journal, 129: 495–510.
23. Rau, Z., ed. 1991. The Re-emergence of Civil Society in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
24. Anderson, C.A., 1983. Social Selection and Economic Development, Washington, DC: World Bank. Table 6.1
25. Trends prevalent in 1970 persisted until recent times. This is linked to the artificially high non-salary rewards of industrial workers compared to higher education graduates
26. It is not easy to find comparable information, and therefore not a simple matter to make comparisons across time and from one country to another. However, in the United States, university students from professional backgrounds were 3.1 times over-represented in 1927 and 2.5 times in 1957; in France, over-representation was 2.8 times in 1950 and 2.4 times in 1965; in the United Kingdom, 2.6 times in 1961 and 2.4 times in 1979; in Japan, 2.4 times in 1953 and 1.8 times in 1968; in Hungary, 3.1 times in 1931 and 3.2 times in 1963. See Anderson, op. cit., n. 15.
27. Much of the variation in education expenditures can be attributed to differences in wages by region. See Heyneman, S.P. & Teodorescu, D. 1993 Russia in the Transition: determinants of educational finance by oblast, 1991-1992 (Washington DC, World Bank, draft).
28. Plomp, T., 1994. Admission to Higher Education in Russia, Washington, DC: World Bank, mimeo.
29. Travel was a serious handicap even when the system was highly subsidized. Today, however, travel grants to candidates have largely been eliminated, and costs of internal travel are rapidly approaching international levels. Today, the airfare from Vladivostok to Moscow is greater than that from Moscow to London. Even the highest quality institutions, such as Moscow State University, are in danger of becoming institutions serving largely local populations
30. Labor market demands have not shifted equally in all fields. Radical changes are characteristic of the social sciences and humanities, some of the engineering sciences and those areas where there was little or no precedent for current course requirements: economics, business administration, advertising. In these latter cases, the entrance examinations can be significantly different from the requirements for labor market success in those fields.
31. Ministry of Education. 1993. Federal Program for Education Development in Russia (Federalnaya Programa Razvitiya obrazovaniya v Rossii) (Moscow). See also State Committee on Higher Education, Moscow: 1994 Higher Education in Russia: Current Status and Prospects for Development.
32. Kitaev, I., 1995. Critical Issues in the Management of Russian Higher Education, Paris: International Institute of Educational Planning, working paper.
33. The Russian federal ministry of education employs about 510 professional level staff, of whom eight are assigned to the statistical unit. Despite the fact that the system contains 30 million students, five million faculty and 158,000 institutions, the statistical unit is not computerized. By comparison, the US Department of Education has approximately 3000 professional staff, of whom approximately 235 are assigned to the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and 110 to the National Center for Education Statistics.