Managing vocational education and the youth labour market in post-Soviet Russia

Abstract

The paper assesses the impact of recent attempts to reform Russia's system of Initial Vocational Education and Training (IVET). Having become dislocated from industry after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Vocational Training Colleges (Profuchilishche, or PU)1 recently became the subject of decentralizing reforms intended to make them more responsive to local labour market demand. Drawing on research conducted in the Ul'yanovsk region of Russia in 2004, the paper argues that in some respects the system has become more flexible. However, the reform process as a whole, particularly in its emphasis on ‘social partnership’, is too dependant on change taking place spontaneously. Qualitative change is further hindered by continuing efforts to engender an excessively close fit between labour market supply and demand, a tendency that owes its rationale to Soviet-era planning, and which ignores the way many graduates of PU approach their transitions into work.

Keywords:

• Youth transitions
• vocational education
• social partnership
• youth labour market
• Russia

Notes

 1 During the Soviet era PU had the longer title of Professional'noe Tekhnicheskoe Uchilishche, or PTU, which provided the root for the slang term used to describe its students, ‘pe-te-ushniki’.

 2 The website of the UK's Learning and Skills Development Agency provides a good example of these trends, as an animated character advertising vocational subjects warns: ‘time is passing by and you need to make those choices. Daunting isn't it? Believe me I know, especially when it's so important that we get it right, for our own sake! Everyone knows that if we enjoy what we are doing we will succeed…’ (http://www.vocationallearning.org.uk/students/gcse/intro_flash.htm, accessed 2 January 2005).

 3 The major relevant publications are the journal of the Institute for the Development of Vocational Education (Professional'noe Obrazovanie, or ‘Professional Education’) and the weekly Uchitel'skaya Gazeta (Teachers' Journal).

 4 Principal amongst these have been: the Concept of Reforming Initial Vocational Education (1997); the Concept of Modernization of Education (2000); the National Doctrine of Education in the Russian Federation (2000); Measures for the Improvement of the System of IVET (2003).

 5 The website of the institute is http://www.irpo.ru. Among their publications dedicated to the development of social dialogue are: Smirnov, I. and Tkachenko, E.V., Sotsial'noe Partnerstvo: chto zhdet rabotodatel'? Moscow: IRPO; Glazunov, A.T., Vybornov, V. and Kazakov, V. (2003) Praktika Sotsial'nogo Partnerstva Regionov Rossii. Moscow: IRPO; IRPO (2002) Razvivat' Sotsial'noe Partnerstvo. Moscow: IRPO.

 6 The rector of the Moscow Higher School of Economics Yaroslav Kuzminov, for example, who is one of the key figures in current education debates.

 7 Work placement here should not be confused with the way it is sometimes understood in English-speaking countries, i.e. as a period of on-the-job training. It is used here as a translation for the term trudoustroistvo, which literally means ‘work setting-up’.

 8 Notably Layard and Richter (1995); Commander and Tolstopiatenko (1996), Standing (1996). For a brief discussion, see Kapel'iushnikov (2001: 10–12).

 9 Hence both UAZ and UMZ were often open only a few days per week during the period in which fieldwork was undertaken.

10 Although the path to higher education has many barriers for PU graduates. Not only do they largely come from relatively poor families, making it difficult to pay the fees that are usually attached to higher education places, but also young men graduating PU are more likely to be conscripted into the army than those in other levels of education. This is because those who study in SVET colleges or in higher education would begin their courses at the age of 17 and then be unavailable for the army draft at the age of 18, which is when PU students graduate. The present research indicates that plans for further study are easily dropped upon returning from army service, tending to give way to more immediate concerns related to leisure, work and family formation.