The Specific Features of University Education in Russia: The Conception of “Educational Distribution”

Abstract

There is a predominating opinion that
higher education in Russia principally does not
differ from that in other countries, having been
at a certain time created following
the example of the later, while merely
endowed with regional specific features.
However, its peculiarities (higher education
as a social status, the social distribution
of diplomas of a single sample, absence
of academic freedoms) are so essential,
that they make it possible to speak of education
of a different type, contrasting
the modernist research “Humboldt” university.
In to the opinion of the authors, it is based
on “distribution”, the mechanism of which
has been described by economist Olga
Bessonova and sociologist Simon Kordonsky.
“Distribution” includes in itself handing over
and disbursement, nationalized instrumental
property, compulsory subservient labor,
planned organization of labor and, finally,
the institution of complaints — the reverse
connection between the distributing
and the receiving channels.
The authors of the article define higher
education in Russia (both the state-run
and the so-called “commercial”)
as “distribution of higher education”
and consider that it corresponds with the peculiarities of the Russian civilization,
which has preserved a traditional character
at its core. The aspects of the “distribution
of higher education” (both the social status
and the sum of knowledge indispensable for it)
are briefly described in this work.