The differential effect of state and market on the higher education landscape in Belarus and Russia: Soviet-type division and bifurcation

ABSTRACT

This study addresses the lack of studies of diversity in post-Soviet higher education systems. It aims to examine institutional diversity in two post-Soviet countries as the result of higher state and market forces in the context of high-participation systems of higher education. The ‘enrollment economy’ has become the most powerful signal for higher education institutions in both countries. However, in Belarus, the conservative position of both the state and organizations, mitigates the effects of market-driven signals. The study reveals bifurcation as the key process distinguishing Russian higher education from Belarusian. While still in Russia middle-layer HEIs are not capable of changes in sectoral identity locked-in by the Soviet model.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-Soviet higher education
• diversity
• high-participation systems of higher education
• Belarusian universities
• Russian universities

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Anna Smolentseva for her supervision, mindful and solid advice, although any errors are my own. I thank Olga Gille-Belova and Larisa Titarenko for help with data on Belarusian HEIs. This article is one outcome of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Daria Platonova is the Head of the Laboratory for University Development at the Institute of Education at National Research University Higher School of Economics. Her main research interests include the diversity of higher education institutions, their performance, and organizational behaviour. She coordinated several research projects on higher education at Higher School of Economics, participated in the wide range of research for the ministerial bodies and international agencies.

ORCID

Daria Platonova http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8798-3243

Notes

1 In this study ‘institutional diversity’ and ‘diversity of institutional landscape’ refer to the diversity of the types of higher education institutions beyond formal classifications.

2 Gornitzka and Maassen (2000) study is the insightful example of comparative research of policy regimes in higher education within comparable institutional context.

3 The high level of age cohort participation is not directly related to the high level of accessibility and equality. For Russia these questions are discussed in Bessudnov, Kurakin, and Malik (2017).

4 Here I use 'market' to indicate a sphere where intersection of demand and supply is clear-cut. The higher education market is not a single whole; there are a multitude of markets: the market of academic fsculty, of research grants, of donations, etc. In this study I focus on the balance of student demand and universities' response in terms of fields and forms of educational programmes that has become the most evident type of market ‘empowerment’ in higher education in the post-Soviet context (Huisman, Smolentseva, and Froumin 2018).

5 We use the term Byelorussian Republic as a shorter name of Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic

6 We use the term Russian Republic as a shorter name of Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR)

7 In 2006 the number of satellite HEIs achieved the peak: 1823 satellites of state HEIs and 378 satellites of non-state HEIs. Afterwards the government made tougher rules for establishment and activity of satellite HEIs.

8 Here and after in case of Belarus, data comes from the HEIs’ websites and open internet resource http://abiturient.by/universities. The data on Russian HEIs comes from the Monitoring of HEIs' Performance 2015 (http://indicators.miccedu.ru/monitoring/).

9 The share of students paying tuition fee and the share of funds raised from tuition fee are not directly comparable, although it provides the general picture of HEIs’ distribution.

10 Calculations based on data from Federal Statistical Agency, available at: http://gks.ru.

11 The Herfindahl-Hirschman index is calculated as in Rossi (2010): $HH=1/{\sum }_j{\left(\right(x_{ji}/X_i\left)\right)}^2$ and normalized HH* = (HH − 1)/(n − 1), where is a number of students in the field of education j in i institution, is a number of students in i institution; n is number of fields of education (seven according to international classification adopted to Belarus and Russia). In Belarus I take FTE enrolment, and in Russia FTE number of students.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research University Higher School of Economics.