Priorities of studying education in the light of the problem of bureaupatologies

Abstract

The author proves the need to put forward the problem of bureaupathology as a priority for Russian research in education and educational policy. Based on the analysis of foreign and domestic sources, the article summarises the assessments of bureaupathologies in the field of education as phenomena that acquired an institutional form in the post-Soviet period (fixed in the legal, technological, cultural, value and organisational structures of Russian education). The author identified the prerequisites for bureaupathology in the era of neoliberal transformations that also engulfed the Russian education sector: the deterioration of the socio-economic situation and massive labour overloads for the majority of personnel who are not protected from overtime work; unrestrained by legal and socio-political mechanisms the concentration of powers of top management and the increase in its explicit and latent privileges, that reduces the effectiveness of management and generates bureaucratic abuses; the growth of the social interest of "universal management" in rooting its omnipotence and the spread of active paper pressure as a system management technology; the trend of tightening bureaucratic control against the backdrop of the education crisis - rising costs, declining quality, social accessibility and public return, loss of human resources. The article names the tools of bureaucracy used to achieve and assert its dominant position in education as a multi-level industry with millions of employees and colossal intellectual and creative resources: concentration of administrative powers; imitation of their activity and usefulness; reliance on the formal legal base and the departure of scientific management; avoidance of responsibility and depersonalisation of management due to the priority of regulations over real management efficiency; administrative pressure on lower levels, leading most of the staff into a state of paper genocide. The sociology of education plays a key role in studying bureaupathologies and their conditioning, the social instruments used by bureaucrats, proving their dysfunctionality, ways to prevent them in politics and leading education out of the crisis caused by bureaucracy. The sociology of education will be able to fulfil its role if the problem of bureaupathology is recognised as a priority, if it is introduced into the problem field of new education research, if a practice-oriented concept of bureaupathology is developed, and if the prerequisites that give rise to it are systematically eliminated.