Woes of Russian Academics

PRINT AND PAY FOR ARTICLES OR YOU
ARE OUT!

How academic articles are a continuation of

wage cuts by other means

By Stephen Wilson

  

MOSCOW -- In order to boost the overall prestige and attain

and respectable ranking ; the Institute of Power

Engineering insists all English teachers must

write at least a minimum of 4 to 5 articles in

an academic journal a year . Should they fail

to win a prescribed number of minimum points

they will be punished by being offered less

hours and pushed out of work. That is you fail to

obtain a minimum assessment of above 11

points . How do you obtain those points ? You

are obliged to attend conferences, write articles

and perform some kind of serious research. The

problem with this is that it is all unpaid work and

not even explicitly stated in their contracts. In

fact, as far as Second City Teacher is concerned,

teachers don't have any rights or trade union

to defend themselves and can be dismissed for

even expressing a different opinion than their

officials. We previously interviewed teachers who

had been threatened with dismissal or unfairly

dismissed for simply taking sick leave guaranteed

by Russian labor legislation. Fortunately the

teacher Olga, who was unfairly fired, obtained

an alternative post. But she was fired in a

humiliating way in front of her colleagues thus

indicating not only illegal action but lack of basic

professional management skills.

I spoke to one teacher whose name has been

changed to Natasha. 

"I'm not sure I will be able to keep my job this year at the

institute," she told me. "I have not managed to get enough points and have had only one article published in a

Journal. If you fall below the threshold score you

will get only 1/7 or 1/8 of the normal workload

meaning it is just not worth your while continuing

to work . So people are not so much fired as

slowly sidelined ".

One of the basic grievances of teachers in both

schools and institutes is how academic

coordinators have the discretion to confer how

many hours a teacher is awarded. So if a

particular coordinator has a favorite teacher they

can offer the teacher more hours than other

teachers thus leading to tension in the office.

Where on earth can many overworked English

teachers find the time to do research or write

articles? Most of the English teachers have not

just one job but a few in order just to get by.

Another problem is that the teachers themselves

must pay for the articles to be published in

journals and not the institute . It is as if the

institute wants to have its cake and eat it!

The cost can be staggering. It ranges from a

minimum of 1000 rubles to 15,000 rubles for

one article in the most prestigious journals.

Very few people read those published articles.

I asked Natasha: "What if a teacher is very

good at teaching and can hardly afford to pay?"

Natasha answered: "Well yes, I know one

teacher who had to pay 15,000 rubles to get

one article published but she told me it was a

necessity so she could progress in her career

at another institute or university."

The result is teachers are being forced to accept

a pay cut to keep their jobs. In fact , being an

academic is an expensive burden that many

teachers could happily do without. Even if you

have a doctorate an academic journal won't

publish your article unless you pay them some

fabulous fee in a journal that is often obscure.

Maria Koroleva, an academic who works as a

linguist, had to struggle for years just to find

a post-graduate course and even then told me

she has to pay for a doctorate. And even if you

become an academic in America or Britain you

could find yourself on part time and short term

contracts. And those are the so called lucky

graduates who managed to find work in their

field in the first place. The rest are often working

in pubs and supermarkets .

Romantic ideas about working in idyllic

ivory towers shielded from acute problems of the

outside world is largely a myth. Instead,

universities reflect the problems of working in

other industries such as low pay, bad office

politics, overwork, insecure contracts,

threatened redundancies and lack of

empowerment. One may well ask: "Who needs

the prestige most of all: teachers or the Institute?"

I think most teachers would reply they simply

want to do their jobs well in peace without

prestige!