The Fundamental Nature of Engineering Education in Russia and Belarus

Abstract

In this article we investigate the problem of the balance of fundamental and applied training in technical colleges through the lens of a historical analysis of the development of the Soviet school of engineering. We demonstrate that the Soviet school of engineering became overreliant on fundamental education due to historical features of its formation. Now, it has created a psychological barrier to finding a new balance between fundamental and applied training that is needed in order to enhance the innovative productivity of engineering schools. We identify the basic causes that are complicating the search for a new acceptable balance between fundamental and applied training with an eye to finding ways to enhance the innovative productivity of technical colleges. The conclusion that proper quality control is needed for engineering studies conducted by the industrial (business) sector is grounded.

Notes

English translation © 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text © 2015 “Alma Mater.” “Fundamentalizatsiia inzhenernogo obrazovaniia v Rossii i Belarusi: vyzov tekhnologicheskomu razvitiiu,” Alma Mater, 2015, no. 9, pp. 15–27. Translated by Kenneth Cargill. Igor Vasilyevich Kotlyarov, doctor of sociology and professor and director of the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Belarus. E-mail: [email protected]. Svetlana Viktorovna Kostyukevich, candidate of sociology, senior staff scientist at the Institute. E-mail: [email protected]. Natalya Ivanovna Yakovleva, graduate student at the Institute. E-mail: [email protected].

^1. S.P. Timoshenko received his engineering education in prerevolutionary Russia, and his career as a scientist and engineer began during that period. In 1918 he immigrated to the United States, where he also enjoyed success as a researcher and professor. After the Soviet achievements in space exploration in 1958, he came to the USSR to study the Soviet school of engineering and then presented his finds to the court of American public opinion. People in the United States were appalled by the spectacular success of Soviet science and engineering in the field of aerospace technology. Timoshenko's comparative analysis of engineering education in the USSR and the US from 1958 is extremely valuable because the author was well acquainted with both systems.

^2. Although Russian tsars and their governments founded engineering schools, they were much less in demand due to the lack of state support for industrial development and the poorly developed middle class. In such a situation it was not easy to solve the problem that engineering students received insufficient practical training.

^3. The conviction that was confirmed by the capitalist system after the ideological revolution achieved by Protestantism.

^4. Fundamental training in engineering institutions included scientific training in the physical sciences and the general engineering sciences. It is permissible to define it as scientific training or theoretical training, but usually the term “fundamental training” is used to emphasize that we are talking about a large amount of scientific knowledge taught to the student.

^5. It was from this turning point that theory began to give way to practical concerns in engineering schools and the underlying logic of study, and Great Britain, although considered to be the incubator of the industrial revolution, began to cede its position of technical leadership to France and Germany. The process of combining theory and practice was not widely developed in the UK. Although the British education system traditionally cultivated a spirit of research and creativity, its failure to ground the curriculum in theoretical knowledge and its reliance on practical experience meant that British engineers could not maintain their leading role in technical creativity. They were practical inventors, as opposed to the scientist inventors in France and Germany.

^6. Note that this quotation does not focus on fundamental subjects in the physical sciences (mathematics and physics), but rather on the design of machines and the strength of materials, i.e., fundamental general engineering subjects.

^7. US engineering schools followed British tradition, which preserved a medieval attitude about the learning of crafts: people learn practical skills in the workplace and not at educational institutions. School is the place for theory, and the workplace is place for practical concerns.

^8. In 1958—authors’ note.

^9. Although S.P. Timoshenko remarked about “the lack of engineering training,” the division of labor between engineering schools and private industry in the US system was informed by reasonable considerations that considered each sector's area of interest. Under the Russian (Soviet) system, a technical college is responsible for the scientific and professional (practical) training of students while not being interested in whether students learn any practical knowledge or skills (after all, the graduating student will not work at a college, but rather in industry). Enterprises in industry, and not technical colleges, are interested in ensuring that graduates have good professional practical training. However, in the Soviet system enterprises were neither very interested nor were they given the chance to influence how educational institutions were run.

^10. The division of professional subjects into major and specialization subjects is associated with the tradition of Soviet higher education, which was strongly identified with a “desire for narrow specialization.” This division can be demonstrated in modern curricula. For example, the curriculum of the Engineering Faculty of the Belarusian National Technical University states: professional qualification—engineer, major—technical equipment for machine-building production, specialization—tool production. Here is another example: the curriculum of the Faculty of Transport Communications of the Belarusian National Technical University states the following: professional qualification: civil engineer; major: bridges, transport tunnels, and subways; specialization: bridges. Thus, the division of professional subjects into major subjects and specialization subjects indicates a desire to train engineers to do a specific job, that is, the specialization indicates that the engineer knows how to perform practical work.

^11. The increase in the total length of the academic program indicates that the number of courses offered to students has increased: indeed, compared with the curriculum for the 1958–59 academic year, during the 2011–12 academic years there were twice as many subjects available. The curriculum for the 2011–12 academic year lacked certain disciplines that were present during the 1958–59 academic year. However, many new ones have appeared. The number of course hours allocated to a given subject has also increased.

^12. The combination of scientific and specialized training was the strength of Soviet higher education, since professional education was based not only on practical experience, but also on scientific knowledge. Thanks to a curriculum that married scientific and professional (practical) training, Soviet graduates were well prepared in science, which allowed them to be competitive in the knowledge-intensive labor market, especially in those areas where Soviet science was well developed. Another positive point of this union was that study of science and participation in research work helped Soviet students develop their critical thinking skills. Since Soviet universities never devoted special attention to the “development of critical and independent thinking skills,” academic preparation indirectly fulfilled this objective. However, a disadvantage of this approach was the fact that ensuring that all Soviet students without exception received good scientific training was a very costly affair.