Higher education of new converted Crimea is still working the way it was usually done in Ukraine. In spite of the existence of own Ministry of Education and Science in Crimea, for more than 20 years, its higher education system was entirely formed and fully integrated into the Ukrainian one. After the occupation of the autonomy, one of the first legislative acts was the law of the President of Russia dated May 6, 2014 “On Specific Features of Legal Regulation of Relations in the Area of Education in Crimea and Sevastopol”. This law set standards providing the integration of education systems of Crimea and Sevastopol into the educational environment of Russia. New Crimean authorities promised to pass own law in this area in August but it ended in talk because Simferopol wants its own law as well as Sevastopol wishes to have its own. Today just formal changes have taken place here. The main innovation was the creation of two federal educational collective farms on the basis of more than 20 universities and scientific organizations – the Crimean federal university and Sevastopol state university, which will get an official status on 1/1/2015 and 1/1/2016 respectively. A Candidate of Medical Science, Associate Professor Sergey Donich, who is a former member of the Party of Regions in the past and a member of “Patriots of Russia” now, was appointed the Rector of the first one. Crimea Medical University named after S. I. Georgievsky was let be, probably, for fear of losing more than 1,500 foreign students, as well as Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University, which is important for the fake “equality of the nationalities” since it is oriented mostly on the Crimean Tatar culture. By the way, student trying to leave the newly created Crimean Federal University voluntary complain that they were left in a very strange situation. In the words of student Anna who made a transfer to one of the universities of mainland territory of Ukraine, it is not easy to leave the university: “The administration of the university told me that they don’t know how to dismiss me and what to fill up my documents because officially my university is already not Taurida National University but at the same time it is not Crimean Federal University yet”.
Form determines consciousness. Appointment of Sergey Donich became symbolic for understanding the shape of the future Crimean education. An Associate Professor (even not a Professor) was appointed from above. Unlike the electivity of rectors in Ukrainian universities, their appointment is set by law in Russia. It is the key but not only difference that gives understanding of movement vectors of two education systems. According to the law “On Education in the Russian Federation” of 09.01.2013, its rigid centralization with the “electivity” of some universities is introduced. This electivity implies budgetary allocations. It is an axiom whether the Crimean universities with an Associate Professor as a rector will get the nod or not. If we put aside the money, then the appointment of rectors conflicts with the principle of the university autonomy and academic freedom. Ukraine took the idea of the university autonomy in academic, organizational and financial areas as a basis of its law “On Higher Education” of 01.07.2014. Russian and, therefore now Crimea, are focused on its rigid centralization. So, it will have to drop the idea of broadening of powers of Board of Academics and staff of Universities, in particular, the possibility to choose a rector independently. As for the hierarchy of student’s educational qualifications and academic degrees, there will be almost no changes in this question. During the transition period Russia recognizes master’s and doctoral certificates, which were giver earlier. In its own turn, Ukraine said goodbye to the degree of “specialist” and “master of science” having introduced such degrees as “Junior Bachelor”, “Bachelor”, “Master”, “Doctor of Philosophy” and “Doctor of Science” that meets the world’s requirements. Therefore, a required part of a bachelor’s, master’s and PhD’s degree is European diploma supplement. The Russian law only declares that it is aimed at the integration of the Russian and European educational spaces. Chapter VI “The international activity in education” just mentions “the possibility of implementing cooperative educational programs”. And while Ukraine wants to achieve the recognition of their diplomas in Europe, Russia “simplifies the procedure of recognition of foreign degree certificates in Russia”. In fact, simplification already touched a grading system of the Crimean students who moved from the European Bologna (100-point modular) system to the traditional Soviet five-mark system. By skipping the degree “specialist”, Russian masters will study for one 1 year longer. Emphasizing the autonomy of the education system, Ukraine has canceled the higher education accreditation, so the phrase “higher education institutions of accreditation levels III-IV” is fading away. Meanwhile, in Russia an Education Minister Dmitry Livanov constantly threatens to close unreliable universities – taking into account problems with funding of many educational institutions, it is becoming a trend.
Consciousness determines the content. After the annexation higher education teachers as well as all public-sector employees got increased salaries in comparison with the Ukrainian teachers but student scholarships remained the same. Considering the fact that the prices in Crimea is also striving for catching up and overtaking the Russian ones, it is difficult to say to what extent educators are satisfied with this “premium”. Dissatisfaction with low salaries in universities is increasing in Russia itself. Recently “ridiculously small” salaries of lecturers left the Russian Minister of Education perplexed. According to the data of Russian trade unions, wages together with all premiums in higher education institutions were: a lecturer – 9556 rubles (3037.37 hrn.), an associate professor – 14497 rubles (4,607.87 hrn.), a professor – 21407 rubles (6,804.21 hrn.). An official average salary in Russia is 17 thousand rubles. Salaries of rectors who are appointed to the post range from some hundreds of thousands to a million and more rubles. Since minimum fixed salaries in occupational groups are not prescribed in Russia, rectors are entitled to determine the amount of salaries. As local Crimean authorities promise, salaries of lectures will be will be an average of 35,577 rubles (11308,15 hrn.). It is more than in Moscow and St. Petersburg! If Ukrainian universities are provided with almost full autonomy and, importantly, they have the financial autonomy, then Crimean Russian institutions continue to be prisoners of the budget. In its turn, the budget is primary spent on salaries and scholarships while leaving just a small part for the development of the scientific base and funding of research programs.
Therefore, concern of many regions of Russia that their scholarships and salaries will be cut to support the Crimean colleagues seems to be far from reasonless. Even if wages of Crimean professors and associate professors remain the same as it is today, in terms of work time expenditures (that is teaching, research and methodological work) they will need to work more in order to get it. The new Ukrainian law reduced a teaching load up to 600 hours per year, whereas in Crimea it remains at the level of 90s with a limit of 36 hours per week or 1512 hours per year. At the same time a load on students was decreased by 25-30% in Ukraine. In other words, they will spend in lectures and seminars 20 hours instead of 30 hours a week. Most likely, today the future of the Crimean higher education is simply a non-topical issue. From next year, it will be an exact copy of the Russian-Soviet system and “…the thing is not only in collective farms as a socialist form of organization but first and foremost, it is in a content that put in this form, – primarily, the main point is who is a head of this collective farms and who manages it” – as Stalin wrote it.
