Alexey Parnovskiy, head of laboratory in Space Research Institute
“The first priority is to change education in schools. Students there must be taught how to learn. Unfortunately, schools now produce graduates of very questionable quality. I lecture in the university, and all the first year we have to just repeat the whole school program, and even then the result is not so good. That is the seat of the trouble. Second problem is newly implemented limits for the quantity of the classes (in college). When I was studying, we had five or six classes every day, and four classes on Saturday. Now there are three classes per day. It is nearly impossible to profess humanities with such time limits.”
Alisa Kolpachikova, university student
“For me, the whole Bologna Process (agreements between European countries designed to ensure comparability in the standards and quality of higher education qualifications) is not a nice thing. The amount of material that one has to study by himself is so much more than what they teach during the classes. And the number of classes you visited during the term impacts your grade more than how you studied. Maybe it’s a problem of the Bologna system itself, or maybe it was poorly adapted for our country. The result is that grades don’t match the actual achievement.”
Tamara Kalinina, pensioner
“Teachers should change. They don’t progress at all. They don’t read much, don’t pay interest to what’s new around. And in general, the system is crusty. It is true for schools and for everything else. And kindergartens, too. A smart person won’t take such a low-paid job. But smartness is not enough. The main point is that teachers must love children. And they just don’t. In the kindergarten that my daughter visited, you know what happened to the kids who didn’t want to eat their meals? The teacher made them eat in the toilet! How’s that for you? What is it, a concentration camp?”
Ihor Aksiutenko, university student
“Universities are not prepared for the new school year. I’m now entering a master’s program, and I keep coming to the university day after day to register, because it’s all very messy. Every day somebody turns out to be out of the office, and I end up wasting time getting one document a day. The organizational level is poor. Also, the combination of the Bologna system and our old system works badly. Some professors end up evaluating students according to the Bologna system, while their demands for students are based on the old system. Otherwise, the system is more or less fine.”
Tatiana Zhdanova, school teacher
“We crucially need better funding for education. Any other changes must be preceded by that one. If we want our education to be of higher level, on one level with education in Europe, we need new equipment and good funding. I teach computer science in school, and our computers are seven years old, or even older.”
