"Fact" daily writes:
The prospect of closing regional universities on the way to creating an academic city is disturbing. At the same time, there are reports that schools will be closed in various villages due to the lack of students and other reasons. Won't the mentioned processes contribute to emigration from village to village, from village to regional center, from marze to Yerevan, and the perspective of proportional development of marze and the capital will remain as a wish? Education expert Atom Mkhitaryan says that in every country, especially in Armenia, educational institutions - schools for villages, higher educational institutions for regional cities - have a community-building significance. "The life of a village where there is no school can be counted on the fingers in terms of years. A village cannot survive for long without having its own educational institution, which is a public school, even up to the ninth grade. About universities. There is no normal large city in any country in the world, let alone a capital city, that does not have students. There cannot be a normal regional center, city or capital without at least one higher education institution. They are very important for forming the intelligentsia of the given region, keeping it in place, training specialists, and solving social problems. If people do not have the opportunity to get higher education in Kapan, but have a very strong desire, they should also have the opportunity to send their children to get higher education in Yerevan, the so-called "Academic City". This is the first problem, it is assumed that many people will not be able to do this. The second problem will arise when those who moved to Yerevan graduate from universities. Would they like to return to their birthplace? Very few. These steps are centralizing an already over-centralized economy. More than 80 percent of Armenia's economy is in Yerevan. By taking this step, significant damage will be done to Armenia's economy, everything will be concentrated in Yerevan, and no one will definitely benefit from it," said Mkhitaryan in a conversation with "Past". In parallel, we also have a decrease in the number of students. There are several reasons. Many boys were supposed to continue their studies in universities after military service, but were immortalized in wars. Many families cannot afford to pay the rents that are increasing every year. Interest in higher education is declining. In this case, instead of "fixing" the educational institutions in place, the authorities build an "Academic City", which can be half-empty during the educational process. Mkhitaryan cites the example of Armenia and Lithuania regarding the issue. "Both countries have the same population 10 years ago and now. 10 years ago, the number of students in the universities of both countries was the same: from 100 to 105 thousand. In Lithuania even now that number remains between 100 and 105 thousand, and in Armenia it is less than 70 thousand. In the last 10 years, the number of students in Armenia has decreased by 30 percent, in the last 5 years by 15 percent. At the same time, the number of teaching staff has been reduced by more than 12 percent in the last 5 years. In the universities that accommodated 100,000 students, now there are no more than 70,000, which is why there is 30% more space. Let me return to the example of Lithuania. Vilnius University built separate buildings outside the city, taking into account the fact that new infrastructure is needed, it is necessary to attract foreign students, to have appropriate laboratories. But he left his old faculties, such as Philosophy, Literary, History, Culture, etc., in the city center, but the Biology, Physics faculties are operating in adapted conditions outside the city, because the number of students has increased, and they have created infrastructure outside the city. In Armenia, the opposite is the case: the number of students has decreased by 30 percent, areas have been freed, and anyway, they want to spend money, according to preliminary calculations, at least 3 billion dollars, and build some infrastructures to move the already "impoverished" universities there. It is also surprising that this "Academic City" can function in the best case after 8 to 10 years, but the process of "demolishing" and closing universities starts from this very day. Speaking of something that did not exist, they do not allow universities to carry out internal renovations, create infrastructure, and open laboratories. There is an order that nothing related to infrastructure is funded. It is obvious to everyone that the "Academic City" is the "New Vasyuki" - it will be like this here, we will fly into space, etc. In fact, this is an idea that arose in the head of someone, and a person without a higher education, who wants to make it look like a law. They have drafted a law, in which it is written that it will be an "Academic city", it will have so many hectares of territory, and it is not allowed to create any university infrastructure outside of it," says our interlocutor. Also problematic is the bill "On Higher Education and Science", which has been submitted for public discussion and sent for revision so many times that you start to lose count. Mkhitaryan is sounding the alarm about the current bill, it is about disbanding the National Academy of Sciences. "This bill assumes that there will be no NAS law. It has been operating for 13-14 years, thus NAS has a special status, it is an organization established by law. It is planned to write only one article about the academy in the new law, and the academy will become a club of scientists, because more than 30 research institutes and organizations will leave its structure, the titles of correspondent member and academician will be abolished, the project only talks about members of the academy. The academy will not have any function, you can simply gather with scientists and discuss something. No one will be interested in becoming a member of the academy because, in fact, nothing will depend on them. Such an experience in the post-Soviet space was in Kazakhstan, Georgia, after which the academies turned into small clubs of scientists. From the moment this bill becomes a law and begins to operate, all scientific research institutes and organizations will leave the academy's subordination, they will necessarily be subordinated to the Ministry of Education and Culture. After that, he will decide which institute to close, which institute to merge with, and which institute to merge with which university, so that the name of the latter will be a university. Those universities that do not have a scientific organization in their composition will not be called a university, they will be called a university. In other words, if you are a university and want to be called a university, you must have at least one scientific organization in your composition," adds the education expert. So what are they trying to do with our education system? "In the entire educational system, they are trying to implement the transformation of values as fast as possible. Values are turning upside down, what was good 10 years ago is now the worst thing. What was bad 10-15 years ago is now becoming a good thing. The values that our generation, the generation older than us, professed, should not be professed by the coming generation, and this is done through the public education system and textbooks. As a result, we have chaos," concludes Atom Mkhitaryan.
Lusine Arakelyan
