An Eloquent Reponse to the “Action Plan” from STU faculty member
who knows what he’s talking about since he has first-hand knowledge of how an over-bureaucratized state controlled post-secondary education system works.
Back in the U.S.S.R.?
This was my first thought upon reading the Action Plan to Transform Post- Secondary Education in New Brunswick. Only recently, during my last year visits to Russia and Ukraine, I proudly explained to local professors the advantages of the western system of higher education, based on the principles of academic freedom, organizational autonomy, peer review and professional accountability. How profoundly this system differs from the Soviet system of petty bureaucratic control, whereby each syllabus, each course offering and each degree requirement had to be approved by an anonymous desk officer of the Ministry of Higher Education, an officer who had never had an academic job himself!
It seems the advantages of the western system of higher education, which has been called “liberal” for some reason, now seemingly forgotten in our province, are totally lost on the drafters of the Action Plan. They miss the laurels of the state planners of the bygone Soviet era. They want to fix the problem by creating several more institutions of the government and making universities report to the bureaucrats. They want professors to comply to the performance standards which will be drafted by those who never taught a university-level course. They want to make courses and degrees transferable by the executive order. Replace professional accountability with bureaucratic accountability. Remove regulation of the community colleges, while imposing a regulation burden more typical of a third-world society on the universities.
I have a feeling of deja vu. We are back in the U.S.S.R. I want to remind the drafters that the Soviet system of education, while putting the first man into space, has also subjugated the whole of Soviet society to 70-something years of rule by despots, semi-literates and ignorant mediocrities who, among their other achievements, have sunk the economy of one of the richest nations in the world. Incidentally, they finished by dissolving the country and putting themselves out of jobs. A befitting finale for the government-controlled system of higher education.
Read the rest of Mikhail A. Molchanov’s “Graham’s PSE plan would be a Soviet disaster,” Telegraph-Journal (July 8/08).
Yes, a sublime analysis. I’ve been thinking that “streaming” a “seamless” course of higher education produces more widgets for the employ of older widgets, reduces student freedom of choice, and rushes to the precipice of totalitarianism. “Interesting times,” indeed, is this brand of neo-liberalism. Thank you Mikhail.