ArmInfo. Today we are witnessing the degradation of everything that was developed over 70 years of Soviet power. It was initially assumed that independent Armenia, relying on the potential of the Soviet period, would leap forward and achieve powerful development. However, practice has shown that over 30 years of independence we have experienced significant regression in almost all areas.
Doctor of Sociology, Professor, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia Gevorg Poghosyan stated this in an interview with ArmInfo , commenting on the new draft law "On Higher Education and Science".
According to him, such large-scale projects require complex, lengthy and comprehensive discussions with the participation of academic institutions and universities. "In the appeal of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences to the Ministry, it was clearly stated that if the government, in particular our Ministry, really has positive goals - the development of science and support of education - this requires serious development and discussion with the university and academic community. Otherwise, there is a suspicion that the purpose of the bill is not to help science and education, but to implement a program, possibly long planned and financed by foreign grants," Pogosyan explained.
In addition, the academician noted that more than 25 comments from the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers and lawyers were submitted to the draft law. In his opinion, the new law will effectively deprive the academy of many functions, transferring the institutes to the management of officials from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Sports. "The draft law states that the transfer is temporary, after which the institutes will most likely be disbanded or merged with universities. The law is not fully developed: in one place it says that the academy will function as a foundation, and in another - that it is an independent institution. There are many contradictions, and we are talking about the abolition of the two-stage system of academic titles - from candidate of sciences and doctor of sciences to the transition only to PhD," the academician notes.
At the same time, he emphasizes that serious comments on the bill concerning its content and internal inconsistencies are ignored by the Ministry. This confirms that the department has simply received instructions to push through this legislation at any cost.
In this regard, Pogosyan believes it is necessary to suspend the implementation of the bill and involve the scientific and teaching community, including university professors, in its discussion. He is confident that science and education need to be improved, but it should not be done clumsily, but thoughtfully, taking into account foreign experience.
"The problem is that it is not specialists in this field who are involved in the development of very serious, fateful bills, but rather employees of the apparatus who are not professionals in these rather complex issues," the academician notes.
Pogosyan also warns that the adoption of such a law could lead to the loss of both academic fundamental and applied science, which would be a colossal loss for the country. "This will entail demographic degradation, migration flows and the loss of scientific and production potential. Ultimately, such consequences may have a negative impact on both the people and the country's authorities. Therefore, neither the population nor the state can be interested in this," the academician said.
In this regard, he recalled that the idea of merging academic institutes with universities is not new. There are examples of countries such as Georgia, Kazakhstan and the Baltic States, where academies were transformed into foundations and public organizations, which led to the loss of scientific potential. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the question of whether "small" Armenia needs big science was raised repeatedly. Ministries and the government from time to time considered the possibility of abolishing the Academy, as happened in some post-Soviet countries.
"In these countries, fundamental science, which existed in Soviet times, has already disappeared. The idea is not new, but its implementation through artificial thoughtless imposition of foreign traditions shows that this leads to the destruction of local production, a decrease in the number of people wishing to obtain higher education and the degradation of science. As a result, the country can turn into the so-called "banana republic" - a country with a weak industry, economy and lack of scientific potential. If this is beneficial to someone, then it is certainly not the people, not the intelligentsia and not the scientific community. If this process continues, it will lead to the disappearance of fundamental sciences. By the way, Soviet Armenia commanded respect both within the country and abroad due to the high level of its fundamental science. I do not know who needs this, but the process is going in this direction and has been going on for a long time," Poghosyan noted.
According to him, already in the 90s the chain linking fundamental science, applied science and production economics was broken. "Almost all industry institutes were liquidated," Pogosyan added. In this regard, the academician expressed the opinion that the idea of merging academic institutes with universities is not a solution to problems, but a utilitarian and simple commercial goal: to free up the buildings of the Academy of Sciences for sale to private business. "Already today, about 40% of our scientists teach at different universities. The process of integrating academic science has been going on for a long time, teachers from universities work part-time at the academy. And there is no need to them into one pile," added Gevorg Pogosyan.
He also emphasized that these processes resulted in an outflow of teachers. "In Soviet times, the Academy had about 7,000 employees, now there are 3,500. Half of the potential has already been lost. This process was two-stage: in the early 90s, there was an external wave of emigration of scientists to other countries and an internal wave - the transition of scientists to completely different spheres of the economy, such as the banking sector and private business. Double migration reduced the scientific potential of the Academy. If the law under discussion is adopted, this will lead to an even greater outflow of scientists and to a complete loss of academic science," the academician concluded.
According to the presented draft law "On Higher Education and Science", Armenia plans to establish new standards for quality control of education, introduce a new model of licensing and accreditation of higher education institutions, and replace the vertical model of university management with a horizontal one. It is envisaged that in practice, several levels of management and regulation of the activities of universities will become independent. Touching upon scientific organizations and the National Academy of Sciences, it was noted that, according to the proposed innovation, the NAS will become a fund managed on the principle of autonomy. The main provisions of the new draft law were discussed at a meeting recently held by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, who has an unfinished higher education.
