The Difficulties of Career Guidance. Column in KomputerraOnline #45
The most important thing in education is not the diploma, not the status that allows one to hold a certain position, not a specific set of knowledge. The most important thing is the difficult-to-formalise transformation of a person.
This past Sunday I spoke at a career guidance event for prospective applicants to the faculty where I work. What does one say to secondary-school students who, despite the frost, came to the university? On the one hand, I found myself having to state certain commonplaces; on the other, I can see that these commonplaces are surprising to many. May I devote the present column to this topic, leaving the text on evolutionary biology to ripen a little longer? I shall of course draw on the experience I have gained at my own place of work, but it is probably sufficiently general to be applicable to many natural-science faculties at classical universities in Ukraine and Russia.
The choice of a future specialisation and university is one of the most important — and frequently very risky — choices in a person's life; only the choice of a country of residence or a spouse competes with it in significance. This choice is most often made under conditions of acute shortage of information about the alternatives under consideration. Secondary-school graduates first choose a university and enrol in it, and only then, at last, discover where they have ended up. They study while harbouring absurd notions about what awaits them in the future. They complete university, plunge into real life, and it is only then — if they are fortunate — that they understand what they should have understood during their student years.
This is not the only reason that unhappy people are encountered everywhere, but it does make its contribution to the overall picture.
I observe that people for whom our faculty is simply not a suitable fit keep arriving, time and again. They lose time and sooner or later return to trajectories more appropriate for them. But I feel even sorrier for those who should have come to us yet ended up in entirely different places. They were advised to go elsewhere, or their parents directed them there, or they were promised rivers flowing with milk and honey, or, in the end, they simply feared taking the risk.
How does one make a momentous choice so as not to regret it later? By obtaining the necessary information in advance. And that, of course, is precisely why universities hold open days. Yet young people do not believe the respectable gentlemen and ladies who share their life wisdom with them. School-leavers who are asserting their adulthood have their own hierarchy of ranks and their own hierarchy of authorities. It follows that one must obtain information about universities not only from official representatives, but also from students — near-contemporaries, yet a little older and more authoritative. How? Through social networks, at the very least.
I generally have a poor opinion of social networks: I have before my eyes examples of people whose every free mental capacity and time resource is consumed by the petty squabbling of the web of likes and friends. But even from something as objectionable as social networks some benefit may be drawn, and what I am describing is one such example.
On social networks, both place of study and age are tagged. By searching, anyone can find the pages and communities of students at a university of interest. One can see what occupies their minds, discern how they study and how they interact. One can do more than observe from the sidelines: one can make contact, find someone who inspires trust, and approach that person with questions or a request for assistance. Social networks also contain student groups, faculty pages, scientific society pages, and many other sources of information.
But is it worth striving for a good university at all? In Ukraine today, a tram conductor earns the same salary as a senior research associate — and more than twice what a physician earns; it is unlikely that the situation in Russia, particularly outside the two capitals, is much better. Bear in mind that the conductor may also pocket small change on the side, whereas money rarely passes through the hands of researchers. But can one conclude from this that conductors are considerably happier and more successful than senior research associates? No. And the reason lies in what is not measured by salary.
It may be an illusion, but it seems to me that people with a good education have richer inner lives — that they, all else being equal, manage to live more fully and feel more deeply. Of course, when one is living in semi-poverty, this consolation counts for little, but even at an average standard of living this factor becomes quite significant.
How is one to compare the quantity of life in a philistine who spent the evening on the sofa watching talk shows and celebrity scandals on the television, in an idler who was socialising at a club, and in a student who spent the entire evening working on a thesis project in the laboratory? I do not know, but I suspect the difference is considerable.
But does enrolling with us really condemn an applicant to a low salary? I hope not. And the matter is not only a calculation on the future (though I do wish to believe that over time the remuneration for skilled labour will increase). Even now, many of our graduates are quite successful people.
...Our graduates typically gather at five-year reunions. I attend not only the gatherings of my own graduating cohort but sometimes those of younger graduates as well — I have been teaching for more than twenty years. I am gratified that the proportion of senior managers, principal specialists, highly qualified professionals, and owners of their own businesses among "our" people is considerably higher than the average for university graduates. This holds true both for those who have remained in our field and for those who have changed their specialisation, going into medicine or business, for example. So our work is not in vain!
I am convinced that the most important thing in education is not the diploma, not the status that permits one to hold a certain position, not a specific set of knowledge. The most important thing is the difficult-to-formalise transformation of the person. Its key component, I believe, is the experience of efforts that are ultimately crowned with success. At first one was afraid to attempt it, then one could not manage it, but after being compelled to dig one's heels in, everything began to come together and turned out in the best possible way. A social institution that gives people the experience of such trials considerably improves human material. Connected with this experience is a certain specific shift in the hierarchy of values, and certain special relationships that arise with one's fellow students.
It seems to me that what changes students most profoundly is their participation in research work. My students recount how surprised their classmates at other universities are when they learn that "our" students write dissertations and papers doing things that no one before them has done — and without paying their supervisors for the privilege. Remarkable — at other places such a thing is a novelty!
Incidentally, the understanding that they are required to discover something genuinely new acts on many students in an almost magnetic fashion. You know, I placed a promotional piece on my website for prospective applicants that substantially overlaps with this column. I could not resist boasting of how many students working with me bring their results to publication. How many of them will remain in science is a more complex question, but I think not so few.
A decent university does not open a direct path to success in science, business, and self-realisation, but in my view it does provide the chance for such success. Not all will make use of it. Time will pass, and at some graduate reunion it will become clear that the success of those who achieved more than others was determined not so much by family connections or luck as by a readiness to exert effort in pursuit of their goal. Perhaps at "elite" and well-connected universities things are different — I genuinely do not know; among us it is as I have described.
Now for a painful subject. What was the reaction of commenters on the KT website when I mentioned that I am a university lecturer? "Extracting bribes from students while recounting useless fairy tales that are half a century old."
...Some ten years ago I was travelling in a railway compartment. I got into conversation with my fellow passengers. One had a nephew who was planning to enrol in the biology faculty of Kharkiv University. The other was dissuading her: "Good heavens! It's bribe-takers all the way through there." I enquired about the source of such certainty. "Well, perhaps there's still some old Bolshevik woman there, a contemporary of the mammoths, who doesn't take bribes, but all the men with mobile phones live off extortion from students." The conversation was interrupted — I received a call on my mobile — and resumed with my neighbour's question: "And where do you work?" "I work at the Kharkiv Biology Faculty and, as it happens, I do not take bribes." She blushed, apologised — and did not believe me.
Alas, universities do not exist on an uninhabited island. The habits of our elites corrupt every sphere of society. Yet from my own experience I know that there are universities where dishonesty has never become systematised. Evidently what people say is true — that in many other places the situation is different and it is impossible to complete one's studies without bribes and offerings. What is to be done? My categorical advice: enrol only where it is possible to study honestly, and resist by every means the temptation to resolve one's problems by means of bribery; when confronted with extortion — fight back.
I do not know how applicable my advice is. There may be fields coveted by the elite where everything has already been sewn up. In biology and the other natural sciences things are not yet at that point: in some places education has deteriorated, while in others it still stays afloat. Find out, and choose!
We are not paradise, but at least anomalies are repelled rather than systematised. Students can obtain justice in a conflict with a lecturer without incurring sanctions. However, to prevail in such a confrontation, the student must do everything by the rules. Complaints from a failing student will be dismissed as an attempt to cover up idleness; complaints from several high-achieving students will be treated with complete seriousness.
And what of the official campaign against corruption? The waves of bureaucratic initiatives that periodically wash over universities provoke nothing but irony and sadness. No encryption of examination papers or cross-marking schemes will prevent someone who has decided to take bribes, yet they complicate life for everyone else. Corruption diminishes — not when it is prohibited, but when it is shameful.
For many years now, in my two general courses I have been endeavouring to keep students on their toes through continuous testing throughout the semester, and since last year I have been publishing all results on my website. I confess I have not yet shown how I handle the failing students who carry over incomplete assessments from the semester. Of course, undeserved passing marks do appear there, but — I swear — no undeserved excellent marks. And even the passing marks appear there not because of bribes. Under rules that no one of sound mind would call wise, the faculty cannot expel all failing students: staff positions would have to be cut. We expel the hopeless students, but those who can somehow be brought up to standard we keep afloat by every sort of half-truth. Alas, this harms everyone. If a failing student knew that failure to make an effort meant expulsion, perhaps he would more profoundly transform himself through study. Expelled for failing — he loses time; he applies himself — is reinstated and continues to study. And for strong students, the "almshouse" is harmful because it lowers the general standard of expectations.
Do not be ironic: I feel that I am working on an island where education is still genuinely practised, rather than merely simulated. Will this island's area shrink or expand?