They decided to divide the master’s program into three segments

As part of the creation of our own national system of higher education, its specialized unit, the magistracy, will undergo reform. The Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov spoke about this. The master’s program will be divided into “three sources and three components”: for specialists, for scientists and for managers. In those universities that cannot ensure diversification, master’s programs will be closed.

The first question that arises in connection with the news is – what about graduate school? Over the past year, there have been sometimes mutually contradictory statements about its future. After leaving the lapdog, it was decided to allocate graduate school to the third level of higher education (bachelor’s or specialist’s degree, master’s degree, postgraduate study). Then they said – why is graduate school needed, let’s leave only the master’s degree. Then they decided to keep their postgraduate studies…

With a master’s degree, everything is not easy either. In practice, for example, there remains a requirement for international publications, which are difficult to secure. And, discussing “who is a master and who is not,” the head of the Ministry of Education and Science previously said that a bachelor should not immediately go to a master’s program. You must first gain experience, work…

“The combination of bachelor’s and master’s degrees completes the cycle of higher education,” the minister reasoned. “And we need the master’s degree to play a different role.” That is, it gave “specialized knowledge to a person precisely at the moment when he has already worked and is aware of what he is missing.”

And now, it seems, the final decision has been made. After the reorganization, all master’s programs in the Russian Federation “will be divided into three types: some will train specialists, others will train scientists, and others will train managers.” And the unenviable fate of higher institutions that cannot organize such a division. “At universities that cannot provide high-quality training for masters, master’s programs will be closed,” Falkov promised. And he also introduced the public to the following figures: from 2010 to 2022, the share of young scientists under the age of 39 in Russia increased from 35.5% to 44.1%. Spending on science is also growing: “This year we spent 244 billion on fundamental research, in 2024 we allocated 261 billion rubles for it.”

So, for all bachelors and specialists who dream of continuing and improving their education, a professional master’s program awaits them, “which must be created with the employer.” And it will also be financed jointly, the state budget and business. Research master’s degree or management – those same “people with experience”, “company managers or officials” who need additional knowledge or qualifications will go there.

A detailed commentary on the future of “distributed” graduate school was given to MK by the scientific director of the expert-analytical center “Scientific and Educational Policy” Evgeniy Szhonov.

– The new concept for the development of master’s programs absolutely logically complements the state policy regarding the development of higher education, which we can observe over the last couple of years in many projects of the Ministry of Education and Science. The point is that some strong universities work more with business, with technology partners, with the support of regional authorities. And then there are universities with a capital “U”, where there is good science, these are research universities. There is a logical strengthening here in connection with science – both in the academic environment and with teams of scientists working in corporations and in production.

And weaker universities, in which the master’s program, frankly speaking, functioned “for show” and the preparation of a master’s degree did not end with the training of a specialist of the highest category—such master’s programs will go away. Master’s programs will change in quality and profile. With business and management master’s degrees, everything is clear – there will be fine-tuning of specialists and managers with the active participation of the university’s business partners.

At research universities, we will also see the development of research master’s programs aimed at ensuring that a person follows the path of a scientist and subsequently successfully defends a dissertation. They will not remove graduate school anywhere, they will not replace graduate school with master’s programs or vice versa. Graduate school was no longer considered as a third level of education, when it didn’t matter whether you defended your dissertation or not. We have now returned to the postgraduate model, in which the result is a dissertation. Fortunately, the number of defended dissertations began to increase.

I think that where a university is not included in any of the university support programs, master’s programs in such not very strong universities will gradually close. A master’s degree is a specialized direction, a professional direction that does not end with the creation of a theoretician.

To summarize: master’s programs are becoming more professional and are segmented into three different areas, as Valery Falkov said. Universities that are unable to provide training in these three areas will not have a master’s degree. The postgraduate course remains.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29193 dated January 12, 2024

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The master’s degree was divided into three