Moskovsky Komsomolets: “Professors downgraded to support/maintenance staff”
Public Chamber Council asks Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to address the problems of foreign faculty working in Russia.
The Russian Public Chamber has asked Vladimir Putin to remove the obstacles the Federal Migration Service is creating for foreign faculty teaching in Russia.
Until recently, foreign college and university professors were engaged to teach in Russia about as often as in Nigeria. However, the number of foreign faculty at Russian universities will dwindle dramatically now that the Federal Migration Service has adopted a uniform procedure for inviting any foreign worker, whether it is a street cleaner, a plumber or a university professor.
According to MK's information, the Public Chamber Council has sent a request to Putin about "bureaucratic obstacles" to attracting foreign faculty to Russian universities. The council intends to attract the prime minister's attention to the problems universities face while trying to invite top international professors to teach in Russia. They have good reason to be worried because the Federal Migration Service's new rules regard academic celebrities on the same level as common guest workers.
In fact, foreign professors in Russia have been sitting on a powder keg since October 2009, when the migration authority changed the procedure for inviting foreign faculty. Yaroslav Kuzminov, head of the Public Chamber's education commission, explained to MK citing an official source that the change occurred after a private order was sent by the prosecutor's office. That order, in turn, was issued as follow-up to a Volga District commercial court ruling against the "illegitimate employment of a Turkish national as a teacher at a school in Naberezhnye Chelny."
The court's decision perplexed Kuzminov, who said that "it was justified by quoting the same legal clauses that had allowed foreign professors to get their visas and teach in Russia for six years." That is, the commercial court and then the prosecutor's office have de facto admitted that all schools that hired foreign instructors over the past six years had been violating the law.
But no one seemed to care. Once adopted, the new rules became effective in no time, making the visa procedure for foreign faculty much lengthier and more complicated. What's more, the new rules also introduce quotas for hiring foreign professors – a system which earlier applied to unskilled laborers, such as construction workers and street cleaners.
As a result, dozens of foreign professors teaching in Russia under international cooperation agreements were forced to break their contracts and leave. The first to leave were teachers of the Chinese, German and Turkish languages.
The outflow of foreign faculty has dealt a crushing blow to the quality of education offered to Russian higher school and university students. It has also hurt Russia's international prestige: On the one hand, there are politicians making pompous statements inviting foreign intellectuals to help improve Russian education and research, while on the other there are migration officials building up obstacles to prevent them from doing so.
This situation is even more absurd, Kuzminov went on to say. The top Education Ministry and Migration Service officials are now working hard on a new bill which would simplify the procedure for hiring highly-qualified foreign professionals. But, at the same time, their subordinates are responsible for the current ridiculous situation.
In this case, Kuzminov said, this qualifies as a misuse of office and as such has to be investigated. But to prevent such situations from occurring in the future the law must be amended. First of all, an amendment should be passed that explicitly stipulates that there should not be any required permits for hiring foreign teaching staff and that permits are not required for teaching or research. Second, Kuzminov believes that highly-qualified foreign professors should be given working visas for the entire term of their contracts, which is up to five years. Universities must also be allowed to recruit foreign undergraduate and graduate students. The current ban only makes them go "into the shadows," that is, having others nominally hired in their places.
Promising scholars and scientists should be given priority if they apply for Russian citizenship.
Marina Lemutkina
