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The Ministry of Education and Science wants to rule the ball

The Ministry of Education and Science continues the radical reform of higher education, one of the main goals of which is the elimination of inefficient universities. Yesterday, the Public Chamber (OP) of the Russian Federation submitted an amendment to the law "On Education", according to which it is the Ministry of Education and Science, and not the rectors, who will set the minimum USE score for admission to universities. The department explains that this will reduce the number of C students in higher education, but the university community calls the initiative a disaster.

On November 13, at a meeting of the Public Chamber, 20 amendments to the draft law "On Education" were presented, which in December will have to pass the second reading in the State Duma. These additions were prepared by the RF OP together with experts from the Higher School of Economics (HSE).

The most resonant initiative is fundamentally changing the process of entering universities. Now the minimum passing score for the USE for applicants is set by the administration of the university. The authors of the amendments propose to transfer this right to the founder (for most Russian universities - the Ministry of Education and Science) in order to "legislate the right to refuse to teach the untrained." “We propose to exclude applicants who do not have sufficient scores in core subjects from admission to the first year. We accept people who have a “troika” in a core subject for complex programs, and these people do not study well,” explained the HSE Rector, head of the EP commission on Education Yaroslav Kuzminov. At the same time, he did not hide the fact that the purpose of the amendment will be to reduce specialties that are not popular, which will free up 25-30 billion rubles in the higher education system. per year, which can be used to increase the salaries of teachers. Deputy Minister of Education Igor Remorenko supported this amendment at the hearings and said that the initiative had already been approved by the government.

Thus, the adoption of the amendment will directly lead to a reduction in the number of Russian universities, which President Vladimir Putin announced back in the summer of 2012. According to him, now there are too many universities in the country that offer low-quality education. The President instructed the Ministry of Education and Science to identify inefficient educational institutions by the end of 2012, and then develop a program for the reorganization of higher education.

When asked by Kommersant whether the introduction of the amendment is connected with the plans of the Ministry of Education and Science to reduce universities, Mr. Kuzminov answered evasively. “First of all, we set the task of reducing admission to programs where people who are not able to study in this profile are studying,” the HSE rector said. “They go to study engineering because of the low entry barrier, and then they still go to work in offices and in the shops". "If the specialty of car plant designers is not in demand now, then let no more than 20 people study it all over the country, but with high scholarships," he suggested.

The Higher School of Economics annually compiles a ranking of universities that analyzes the USE scores of first-year students. According to the 2012 ranking, 55 educational institutions out of 100 were in the "red zone" of the list (universities where more than half of the applicants scored less than 69 points out of 507 in the core subject). Light industry technologies, agriculture and fisheries, and mechanical engineering are among the most problematic areas , forestry and weapons. At the same time, in the direction of "Technological Machinery" this year, only five universities recruited students with an average score above 70, the rest received C students.

The amendment has already been criticized by rectors of regional universities, most of whom have asked Kommersant not to identify themselves. “Kuzminov should go outside the MACD in order to understand that few people are eager to study as a teacher because of low salaries,” Ivan Novakov, rector of the Volgograd State Technical University, told Kommersant. “Do these specialties need to be closed? We will have to completely abandon the defense industry or the agro-industrial sector.
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