Scholarly record

CHALLENGE OF MANAGERIALISM IN RUSSIAN HIGHER EDUCATION: RISKS OF IDENTITIESВ’ DESTRUCTION

Andrei Tuzikov, R. Zinurova

Abstract

Nowadays we face with the challenge of managerialism that constructs what is called common sense in social management, i.e. which could be interpreted as "obvious" criteria of evaluation concerning purposes and methods of management actions’ implementation. The ideological essence of managerialism demonstrates itself through the activity of groups of interests that is presented as interest of all “progressive” members of society. These groups of interests include state officials, “academic bureaucracy”, media groups connected with reformers of education, some scholars which are involved in grants supported projects proving the necessity of managerial principals and methods to university’s life. The challenge of managerialism put into question traditional identities which has been always typical for university community. Therefore, the main purpose of the work is to study the impact of managerialism on universities culture and risks it brings with. The research is based on qualitative and quantitative methodology (questionnaire, interviews, case study). Results. The main feature of managerialism as an ideology in higher education first of all is the "economism” or academic capitalism that put forward the importance of financial result diminishing the social significance of education. Ideal that proclaimed is the model of management that Business Corporation has and so the invitations of top managers from corporations to universities are highly welcomed. The second important feature of managerialism in higher education is supposed to be the real cult of “figures” in evaluation the results of universities activity. Here one can see the cult of so called “monitoring of quality” (the main question what is quality itself?), cult of ratings, cult of quantity methodology in measuring results of scientific activity (like Hirsh index). Managerial principles themselves are neither bad nor good but when they take the shape of ideology that proved the “only right way” of development based on financial results, strengthen the positions of academic bureaucracy simultaneously turning professors into “cognitariat” and turning educational program into thousands sheets of paper all these trends cause a lot of questions and doubts. Also the students start feeling themselves as “clients”. A key initiative that could open the way to higher education of a new quality is a clear separation in the higher education system of two essentially different tasks: 1) "improving the quality of human capital" (education proper); and 2) "training specialists for the economy" (professional training).

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