Система аттестации научных и научно-педагогических работников в Республике Беларусь: становление ее институциональной основы и перспективы развития

Abstract

The article examines the features of the formation of the institutional basis of the Belarusian certification system for scientific and scientific-pedagogical personnel of the highest qualifications. It is shown that in many ways it has maintained continuity with the Soviet system of certification of scientific personnel and its basic principles. It is shown that, unlike Russia, where the Higher Attestation Commission is built into the state governing body – the Ministry of Science and Higher Education – and does not itself have this status, in Belarus the Higher Attestation Commission (hereinafter referred to as the HAC) is a republican government body subordinate to the President of the Republic of Belarus, pursuing an independent state policy and implementing the function of state regulation in the field of certification of highly qualified scientific and scientific-pedagogical workers. The article analyzes the dynamics of the number of academic degrees of Doctor and Candidate of Sciences awarded annually by the Higher Attestation Commission of Belarus for the period 1994–2023, which showed that from 2010 to 2023. There has been a relative stabilization in the number of doctoral dissertation defenses annually approved by the Higher Attestation Commission and even a certain increase. At the same time, in the last decade there has been a sharp drop in the annual number of Candidate of Sciences degrees approved by the Higher Attestation Commission. The authors attribute this negative trend to the low efficiency of graduate school in terms of the rate at which graduate students defend their dissertations during the course of study, which over a long period of time amounts to an average of 5% of the annual output. The article shows that the existing sectoral structure of HAC-approved doctoral and candidate dissertations is far from optimal. This especially applies to the sectoral structure of candidate dissertations, where for a long time the prevalence of the share of social sciences and humanities has remained to the detriment of the natural and technical sciences. In this regard, it was concluded that the state order for training highly qualified scientific personnel, primarily in the field of technical sciences, and its target indicators for the near future should be adjusted.