University Heads See Hope In Falling Student Numbers
By Evgenia Ivanova
Staff Writer
While the government attempts to conquer the demographic crisis in St. Petersburg, local university heads say they plan to use the situation to improve education standards.
In five years’ time, the city’s graduate numbers are expected to fall by about 75 percent, leaving the city with 10,000 graduates in 2011, said Konstantin Borisenko, the Rector of the State Marine Technical University of St. Petersburg on Wednesday, as reported by Interfax.
While the problems confronting higher education in St. Petersburg and Russia in general are described by many experts in the field as being daunting, some argue that universities can capitalize on the developing socio-demographic situation in the region.
“We ought to take advantage of the situation to solve [universities’] staff problems, to increase salaries and also to solve problems surrounding the optimization of the universities’ network,” Borisenko said at a news conference.
According to Oleg Ipatov, rector at the St. Petersburg-based Baltic State Technical University, as quoted by the news conference organizer Rosbalt, the average age of university staff is 60 or above.
“Young people avoid teaching careers due to the very low salaries,” Ipatov said. Professors’ salaries can be as low as 3,000 rubles ($110) a month.
Borisenko said that at his university there is a faculty where all the staff are over 60 years of age.
“If they suddenly decide to leave and not to carry on working for kopeks, the faculty will be shut down. The country will loose its only opportunity to train students to get much needed engineering specializations,” Borisenko said.
Andrei Berezhnoi, a student at the St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University also said that the majority of his professors at the university are elderly. According to Berezhnoi, at least 70 percent of the professors are of a pensionable age.
When asked if he has ever considered choosing an academic career, Berezhnoi said “It’s not a profession I’d like to work in, but even if I did I doubt it — they’re just not paid enough,” he said.
A professor at the St. Petersburg-based Baltic State Technical University, who wished to remain anonymous, believes the problem does not concern all higher education institutions and that it is particularly acute in technical fields.
“It’s not the entire education system that’s in crisis, it’s education in the field of creating new products that is in crisis,” the 70-year-old professor who has been working at the university for more then 20 years said in a telephone interview Thursday.
“Redistributing money as a result of the demographic crisis is a very primitive attempt to solve the problem,” he said.
Despite the falling number of students and the extra resources being made available as a result of this fall, the government must increase the financing of these key fields.
Borisenko was quoted by the Interfax as saying that the state spends $700 per student per year, but the Baltic State Technical University estimated that “at least $3,000 a year is needed to educate one student on any technical course.”
|
Ïåðåâåñòè íà ðóññêèé
Print this article
Issues Archive
Issue in PDF
Issue in RSS