Humanitarian-technological revolution and the crisis of higher education in Russia

Abstract

Currently, we see an acute shortage of specialists in many areas of life, which is increasingly called the «personnel disaster.» On the other hand, the prestige and relevance of education among Russian youth is declining. Reforms of education and science carried out in our country for more than 20 years did not give the desired result. The level of education in both secondary and higher schools has fallen significantly in comparison with the Soviet system of the 1980s and the leading countries. This is clearly shown by international comparisons. The situation in the education system of Russia today is increasingly seen as a threat to the national security of the country. The question naturally arises of what to do in this situation. At the same time, it is desirable to find tools and control actions that do not require huge funds. I show that many problems are caused by the fact that the Russian higher school is guided by the guidelines of the outgoing rather than the coming era. Now there is a transition from the industrial to the post-industrial phase of the development of civilization, from the world of machines to the world of people. It happens very quickly, in the form of a humanitarian-technological revolution, and unfortunately is completely ignored by most domestic universities. I propose several approaches that allow universities in Russia to «face the future.» The experience of teaching in a number of universities leads to the conclusion that we face with systemic problems. Their solution requires, first of all, a change in the view of the pedagogical and scientific community on the goals, strategy, and future of national education. Only after such a change we can offer managerial decisions that been tested at a number of sites have a chance of success. I present in these notes some of these approaches based on the theory of the humanitarian technological revolution, on the theory of self-organization, and on the experience of mathematical modeling of educational systems.