‘I Won’t Defend My Diploma, State Will Not Send Me To Work Under Assignment Without It’

• 27.09.2023, 17:32

What do Belarusians think about the authorities’ new assignment initiative?

Recently, the Belarusian authorities, at the instigation of Lukashenka, became “concerned” with the outflow of young specialists and decided to increase the period of mandatory working assignment after graduation. It is also planned to introduce assignment even for those who study at their own expense.

The website Charter97.org looked at what students and their parents think about this.

Students don't understand why they have to work off their own money

Natasha, who is a 5th year student at MSLU, told the CityDog.io website that she basically did not want to study on the “budget” so that there would be no assignment:

“I’m studying to be an English teacher and I’m not going to waste time at school. Now I’m not working under my specialty and I want to stay in my company. In my position, I earn 4.5 times more than if I were a teacher. [...] In any case, I choose myself and my career. I’ll leave the work for the idea to someone else.”

“I don’t understand why I have to work off my own money,” the 3rd year student of BSUPC is indignant. “As a result, instead of attracting students with good conditions, the state simply tightens the screws on us and forces us to go where the conditions are better. It seems to me that the problem of shortage of specialists will only become more acute.”

A final-year student at BSU in a commentary to Solidarity expressed the hope that the announced changes will not affect him and the graduates of the coming year.

“For some reason, it seems to me that mandatory distribution for paid workers was said as a catchphrase, in order to test the degree of people’s indignation,” the young man is sure.

“I’m scared by the prospect of wasting who knows how many years,” a 2nd year student of BSMU told CityDog.io. “I would like to get a normal attitude towards people as an important and main component of the country. This is still a long way off.”

Tatsiana, who studies in Mahiliou on a budget, told Zerkalo what options she chose for herself if the new law is adopted:

“Either I will study till the final year, write a diploma, but don’t defend it — without a diploma they won’t send me to work under assignment, but the knowledge will remain. Or I can get a diploma, work for a year or two for experience, pack my things and leave the country forever. In general, such a law is a shot in the leg. After all, many applicants (the best of them) will simply choose EU and Russian universities.”

A third-year student at one of the capital’s educational institutions told gazetaby.com that she also expects the worst:

“It’s one thing when you study well and know that you can stay in Minsk, and that the work under assignment is only two years, and it’s quite another thing when the declared approach is “you’ll go where we tell you, and you’ll work as long as we tell you, and we don’t know the terms ourselves yet.” Why should students be happy about this?”

Kiryl, who is a final year student at BSUIR, told Zerkalo that after graduating from school, people will go abroad.

“Two years of working assignment is already a long time, but they want to more than double the period. I can’t imagine how applicants should perceive this opportunity as “tempting,” the young man said.

Parents Shocked

Aksana, whose son is studying in a college, drew the attention of journalists from the website gazetaby.com to the absurdity of the authorities’ actions:

“In general, it was clear that since the outflow of specialists continues, and even the growth of salaries does not retain people, they will look for ways to influence the situation. And what our authorities are good at doing is obliging and forcing. It’s not really about raising wages or improving living conditions.”

“This is such a tombstone on the status of Belarusian education,” the mother of three girls who recently graduated from universities expressed her opinion to Solidarity journalists. “Instead of “holding” a future specialist, the state will lose them. And perhaps not only them, but also several more — if we are talking, for example, about yesterday's schoolchild and the whole family decides to leave.”

Mikhail from Vitsebsk, in a comment to Zerkalo, noted that the new law will lead to the opposite consequences:

“In general, this situation will push young people either not to study at all, or to study abroad. The Republic of Belarus demonstrates that there is no consistent policy in the field of education. We simply solve problems by introducing serfdom. When my daughter entered a university, we believed that studying in Minsk was cheaper than in the Czech Republic. It required about 10 thousand dollars a year. Now, perhaps, I would decide to sell the inherited apartment and immediately send my daughter to the Czech Republic.”

Many parents will wonder whether it’s worth paying that kind of money for education in Belarus, says Aksana, whose son is studying in Poland:

“There are no prospects already, and now they come up with this working assignment, for the students to work off their own money. It is also unclear how and where our state is going to send everyone. On the one hand, they are unhappy that graduates are leaving, on the other hand, they force parents to do everything so that their children leave.”

Anatol, whose daughter is studying at BSUIR, told Zerkalo that plans to introduce state assignment for students who paid for studies is another way to squeeze money out of people:

“I think we already pay in full for education — about $1,700 a year. This is a lot, considering the level of salaries in the country.”

Professors say

Former director of the Smilavichy State Agrarian College Mikala Lysenkou noted in a comment to UDF that the prestige of Belarusian education has been catastrophically declining in recent years:

“There was a need to bill a person who completed their studies with budget funds, but did not want to go to a collective farm as part of their assignment, with the total cost of their education. They sat down to count and as a result they calculated for that person to pay an amount that was dozens of times higher than the cost of paid education at the same college. Our education system has not been reformed since the times of the USSR. In Belarus, they don’t think about the cost of education, much less about how to reduce it, how to optimize it.”

A professor at the Belarusian State Agricultural Academy, where Lukashenka studied, noted in an interview with Charter97.org that it is now impossible to correct the situation:

“Recently, the prestige of education in this area has dropped so much that we have been recruiting students unsuitable for training for agricultural specialties. What kind of quality of specialists can we talk about when we have lowered the admission bar so much that we accept applicants who have only school certificates? We have zero competition for many specialties.

In his opinion, if a law on the mandatory assignment for students-payers is adopted, many specialties could be closed because they simply will not enroll enough students:

“As long as the borders are open, nothing will come of it. Smart young people will enroll in the West, some will consider universities in Russia.”