Reform of the Russian Higher Education: Finding Answers to the Challenges of Globalization

About the author:

Abstract:

The article deals with the problem of reforming the domestic higher education. The author believes that the main reform strategy today is the strategy of catching up modernization, which dooms the Russian education to stay behind and repeat the mistakes of others. The article presents a brief analysis of such phenomena, arising from the indiscriminate borrowing, as pragmatism, utilitarianism, and unification. The author demonstrates, why planting these generally positive phenomena in the Russian context leads to negative consequences.

Theoretical-methodological basis, used by the author to present her understanding of effective strategies to reform the Russian system of the higher education, supports the theory of self-organization. According to it, the new order grows from the inside, as some naturally formed frame, but is not imposed from the outside as some artificially built frame.

The article‘s main idea is that in the modern global world following the basic principle of existence (which is the principle of “survival of the fittest”, here the “fittest” is the one creating unique technologies) the simulation development path is the “road to nowhere”. The only reformation alternative for this world is the reliance on the self-organization.

The author defines the reasons of commitment to the catch-up modernization model as follows: disbelief of the government leaders in the intellectual genius of their people; idolization of the West which existed for centuries; the absence of a productive dialogue between the ruling and the intellectual elites of Russia.

References:

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