Belarusian Generation Y logbook

The rules of entering higher education in Belarus are going to be changed soon. The attitude of the Belarusian state to higher education is also changing. The ministry in charge is already alarming about too many specialist with higher education diplomas and lack of labour force at the same time. What are the steps to be taken by the state to solve the problem?

On January 11 the Minister of Education announced that he is going to “orient the management of schools on the task of educational process being not to prepare them for entrance to HEI but to help them to settle down after the school. Somebody must enter university, somebody must study at vocational educational institution, someone has to go to work”. According to the Belarusian minister it is important to understand that to be successful one does not need to have higher education.

Among other suggested innovations the Minister promised to apply the “administrative resource” to control the proceeding of students to the 11th and 12th forms of secondary school, after which young people can enter higher education (at the moment it is not regulated and depends only on personal will of a school student). It is interesting to know how exactly the minister is going to use the “administrative resource” for that purpose, especially taking into account the international image of this country.

The minister also suggests school graduates to pay for centralized testing (10 000 Belarusian rubles for each) which they take at the end of the graduating year and the results can be submitted to universities instead of entrance exams.

However, most impressive suggestion of Mr Radzkou is to introduce a letter of recommendation from local authorities as a necessary prerequisite for entering higher education. Mr. Radzkow said the requirement would apply to those who would like to be enrolled at Public Administration, International Relations, and Journalism departments, because graduates of these faculties may be appointed to “especially responsible government positions” in the future. The letter of recommendation would be based on the general education school report, on the student’s character and personality.

According to him, those seeking to become students at such departments should not only be knowledgeable at required subjects but also must have experience of leadership, i.e., should be, for instance, a member of the Belarusian Republican Youth Union (BRYU). “In this case, the applicant is more fit for jobs such as a diplomat and an administrator,” he said.
Here it should be reminded that BRYU is a pro-regime youth organization which officially proclaimed itself to be a descendant of Komsomol – youth branch of the communist party in the Soviet Union. This suggestion looks very much like an attempt to limit the access to higher education to people who cannot be “trusted” by the state. It goes without saying how important are the mentioned fields of studies for democratic development of the east European nation still struggling against the authoritarian rule.

This view of the role of higher education is rather astonishing. Instead of improving the quality of higher education and the system of higher education in general, Belarusian government rather bothers about the ideological discipline at universities using the boldest method – closing the door to HE for those who may have different political opinion about what is happening in the country. When the European educational community has already agreed about the importance of HE for the social, economic and democratic development of the societies, Belarus is insisting on the opposite. However, it does make sense, but only under the political regime as the one in Belarus, where the state prefers to have the monopoly on the minds of the citizens. And the more educated society is, the more difficult it is for the authoritarian state to keep them under control.

It is widely believed that the special mission of the university system lies in teaching and training the leaders of tomorrow. Apparently, Belarusian government wants to decide itself who is going to be among those leaders.

If the ideas announced by the Belarusian minister of education become law, it will push Belarus to around 50 years back into the Soviet past with legally established system of choosing who is more right than others.