Italy's Bologna is best known in the world for its waterproof cloth and the declaration of the same name with which European higher education entered the 21st century. In both cases, the initial excitement was replaced by disappointment.
And how it began! Recall Vysotsky: "My friends aren't in bologna, but they don't drag you out of the family." In the case of popular in the 1960s synthetic jackets seemed that the brightness, glitter and the ability to protect themselves from the rain without an umbrella more than redeem the problems: clothes do not "breathe", not warm and can cause allergies.
The declared aim of the Bologna Process is mobility among students and graduates. The university systems of some countries, despite the obvious loss of quality of knowledge, were redesigned for the sake of dubious unification. Russia joined the declaration in 2003. At that time relations with the West were still quite warm, but it was not possible to enjoy the fruits of the unified educational system. By reducing the duration of education for most students, we did not gain equal access to European education or the labor market. Today, during the period of anti-Russian sanctions, abandoning the sovereign university system is all the more irrelevant.
In March instructions of the President Vladimir Putin a separate item is allocated tasks on higher education. Their essence is that in this matter the country should live its own brains. First of all, to make sure that higher education curricula correspond to the current and future needs of the economy. The main way to find ways to improve the engineering staff is the "Strategy of methodological support to radically improve the quality and use of specialists with higher technical education", proposed by Vladimir Litvinenko, the Rector of the St. Petersburg Mining University.
The strategy is being actively discussed today in the academic environment and business. Many interesting proposals on the document have been prepared by the universities of the Nedra consortium. Forpost offers to get acquainted with the most interesting of them.
Literally all technical universities are unanimous in their opinion that four years is not enough to qualitatively train an engineer. It is necessary to expand the coverage of the specialty, which, in contrast to the bachelor's degree, provides deeper knowledge and, most importantly, is more firmly connected with practice. The master's degree should acquire a new content. In the document it is emphasized that the training in this direction should instill in the students the ability to master modern methods and means of scientific analysis. A master's student is a research engineer aimed at implementing innovations in his or her industry.
The Almetyevsk State Petroleum Institute (ASNI) has shared its experience in developing master's programs by order of employers. Already since 2017 under such scheme the university implements 60% of the programs. In addition, AGNI's experience in carrying out educational practice during 1-3 years, dispersed throughout the semester, is of interest.
Grozny State Petroleum Technical University named after Millionshchikov (GGNTU) considers it necessary to create a unified electronic data bank on industrial practices:
"A student without going to the internship base (in case there is no such base at the place of residence), will have an opportunity to virtually follow all basic processes, to be involved in solving production problems in his profile."
The emergence of such an information resource creates conditions for the transition to the development of a new generation of online courses, with the connection of virtual simulators (proposal of the Ural Mining University). This is no longer a compromise distance, but a full-fledged opportunity to conduct laboratory classes at the interuniversity level.
Mastering modern equipment used by real sector enterprises is today's task as a minimum. The next step should be a forecast of the competencies necessary for an engineer in the horizon of at least 5-6 years in order to prepare training programs based on the needs of employers by the time the student graduates. A number of universities argued in favor of the need to conduct their own labor market research.
"Not just to train specialists in accordance with the demands of modern production, but to coordinate and modify this demand by initiating the introduction of the latest breakthrough technologies into production," the Russian State Geological Exploration University named after Ordzhonikidze (MGRI) believes.
Ideally, we can talk about joint research of universities with their industrial partners. Here, in the opinion of the Volga State Technological University, as well as in other directions of research and development (scientific and experimental and design works) we cannot do without legislative fixation of allocation of the appropriate target share in the turnover of enterprises (0.05%). We also need financial mechanisms to reduce costs (taxes, overheads) in carrying out joint research work.
According to the Donbass State Technical University, at the national level it is necessary to outline a circle of university specialties, which are especially important for the development of strategically important industries. For such specialties to introduce additional social guarantees to attract the most talented applicants. In particular, increased scholarships and a certain set of benefits.
As you know, every coin has two sides. According to the strategy, the improvement of the status of a technical university student should be accompanied by the formation of a competitive environment for future specialists within the walls of educational institutions during the entire period of their education.
The document reads: "Decisively expel the students with irresponsible attitude to studies already in their junior years."
A number of universities, especially regional ones, fear that a strict approach to demotivated students may come into conflict with the per capita system of financing educational institutions and observing the standard ratio of teachers to the number of student groups. The contradiction will be smoothed if the enrollment competition in engineering fields increases. And this is already an issue for the school.
Among the proposals of the consortium participants on this topic there are, for example, projects of sponsored schools, summer career guidance internships for students of grades 9-11, further development of engineering classes, and university-based children's industrial parks.
There is also a need for initiatives through the Russian government. For example, there are proposals to improve the system of evaluation of school education in the regions, with the introduction of a new indicator of the percentage of 11th grade graduates who successfully pass the exams in specialized mathematics, physics and computer science. Or the inclusion in the key performance indicators of the Ministry of Education of the percentage of schoolchildren who chose to take the physics exam as part of the Unified State Exam.