ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ENGINEERING PERSONNEL TRAINING

A. P. GORONOV, I. F. LIVSHITS

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Scientific Communism)

Recently, the attention of higher education has been drawn to the problem of the correlation among different forms of instruction. This is connected with the fact that the excessive expansion of correspondence and evening study does a certain harm to the principal criterion of the work of higher education—the quality of the training of specialists. A considerable portion of evening students and especially correspondence students display a lower level of knowledge than students in day departments. This is explained by the fact that they do not receive systematic, qualified methodological assistance at the institute, do not have sufficient time for independent work, and are unable to organize it properly.

On the other hand, training specialists with time away from production is more costly to society, and an excessive reduction of evening and correspondence education would make it difficult for a significant part of the country’s population to make use of the most important social advantage of socialism—the possibility of acquiring qualifications and education, including higher education, in accordance with the needs and abilities of every member of our society.

Therefore it seems to us that, when considering the problem of the correlation among different forms of instruction, one must not allow a one-sided approach. Its optimal solution requires a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of personnel training and consideration of the regional characteristics of individual districts of the country: the quality of study, the cost of instruction, and the supply of qualified personnel for the economy of individual districts of the country, including Siberia.

The broad development in the postwar years of correspondence and evening education is explained by the strong aspiration of working people toward higher education in connection with the rapid rates of development of the country’s productive forces, the increased cultural level of the population, the accessibility of these forms of instruction, and the lower costs of training qualified personnel without removing them from production.

The development of the country’s productive forces, the growing role of science in production, and the process of gradually overcoming the substantial differences between mental and physical labor objectively require an increase in the share of engineering and technical workers in the overall composition of industrial-production personnel and in the share of scientific workers in the total number of scientific and technical personnel. This is confirmed by the changes taking place in the structure of personnel in the country’s national economy.

Structure of industrial-production personnel in USSR industry^1
(in % of the total)

The increase in the relative share of engineering and technical personnel (ETP) within the total number of industrial-production personnel is characteristic to an even greater degree of rapidly developing progressive branches connected with the chemical processing of raw materials, electric power engineering, radio electronics, instrument-making, and so forth. Thus, if at the end of 1964 in USSR industry as a whole there were, on average, 10.2 specialists with higher and secondary specialized education per 100 workers, including 8.5 engineers and technicians, then in the oil-extraction industry the corresponding figures were 16.6 and 14.8; in the chemical industry, 15.3 and 12.4; and in machine building and metalworking, 14.1 and 12.1.^2

The number of scientific workers in the country’s national economy increased almost sevenfold over 25 years: from 98.3 thousand persons in 1940 to 666.2 thousand persons in 1965.^3

At the same time, across the country’s economic regions the relative share of particular categories of working people in the total number of industrial-production personnel is not the same. In particular, in most regions of Siberia there is a lag behind the western regions of the country in the saturation of industry with engineering and technical personnel and in the growth of specialists with higher and secondary specialized education, especially at enterprises of Altai and Krasnoyarsk krais, Irkutsk oblast, and others.^4 Taking into account that in the regions of Siberia during the postwar years the chemical industry, wood chemistry, energy-intensive branches of production, instrument-making, and other branches of industry requiring the presence of a large number of ETP have been developing at a rapid pace, the existing situation with cadres of specialists occupying engineering positions cannot be regarded as normal. Concern should also be caused by the fact that in individual branches of industrial production in a number of regions of Siberia—for example, in Krasnoyarsk Krai—during the years of the seven-year plan there was even a decline in the relative share of engineering and technical workers in the overall composition of workers and employees.^5

The insufficient saturation of Siberian industry with cadres of engineering and technical workers is explained by a number of circumstances.

^1 The table was compiled from data in the statistical yearbooks The National Economy of the USSR in 1960, Moscow, Gospolitizdat, 1961, p. 216, and The National Economy of the USSR in 1964.

^2 See V. Komarov, “On the Rational Use of Cadres of Specialists,” Voprosy ekonomiki, no. 9, 1966, pp. 17, 18.

^3 The USSR in Figures in 1965: A Brief Statistical Collection, Moscow, 1966, p. 138.

^4 See V. D. Patrushev, “On Indicators of Output per Worker,” Izvestia of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Social Sciences Series), issue 1, 1964, p. 39; and also B. N. Zykin, Regional Differences in Labor Productivity, “Nauka,” 1965, p. 53.

^5 See V. D. Patrushev, “On Indicators of Output per Worker,” in the journal Izvestia of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Social Sciences Series), issue 1, 1964, p. 40.

The first place should be given to the high turnover of personnel, which is manifested in the population migration to the western regions of the country that has intensified in recent years. The reason for this is the absence here of a full-fledged complex of living conditions, which has led to the emergence of contradictions between the fairly rapid development of Siberia’s industrial potential and the relatively slow rates of housing and communal construction, and of measures to create the conditions determining people’s everyday life and recreation. Since until recently no effective measures had been taken to resolve this contradiction, in some cases it resolves itself, which is especially manifested in the relocation of qualified personnel to the European part of the country.

To a certain extent, the understaffing of Siberian industry with qualified engineering and technical personnel is also explained by the fact that the needs of enterprises, institutions, and agencies of the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East for specialists with higher education are clearly not being met sufficiently by the USSR Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education. Thus, when enterprises, institutions, and agencies of the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East submitted requests to the higher educational institutions of this Ministry in 1964 for 39,139 specialists, only 9,311 people, or 24% of the requested specialists, were assigned to work in these regions of the country¹, including, by specialty groups: power engineering—17%, metallurgy—23%, mechanical engineering and instrument making—19%, and economics—38%.

The incomplete fulfillment of enterprises’ requests for young specialists is characteristic even of the city of Tomsk, where personnel are trained locally in dozens of engineering specialties. For example, the requests of the Tomsk Instrument Plant and a number of other plants are satisfied annually by less than half.

The shortage of engineering personnel is further aggravated by the circumstance that, in a number of branches of production, some of the specialists who graduated from higher educational institutions of Siberia and the Far East are assigned to work in regions of the European part of the country. Thus, in 1964, 1,528 people graduated from higher educational institutions of Siberia and the Far East in mechanical-engineering specialties; of these, 1,246 people were assigned to work at enterprises of Siberia and the Far East (or 81.6% of those graduating from higher educational institutions, while enterprises had requested the number of required specialists at 5,958 people), while 18.4% of the graduates left for the Urals and other regions of the country. A similar situation is observed in the group of metallurgical specialties (317 people graduated; 222 people, or 70% of the graduates, remained to work in Siberia and the Far East, while enterprises had requested 439 people) and in a number of other specialties².

The shortage of engineering and technical personnel in the regions of Siberia and the Far East, under conditions of a general acute need for labor in the eastern regions of the country and some lag in a number of Siberian regions in the rate of growth of labor productivity compared with the western regions of the country, requires increased attention to the question of training engineering personnel on the basis of the existing system of higher and secondary specialized education. This is also due to the fact that, among the existing engineering and technical personnel, a significant share of the workers is

practitioners and have no specialized education. Thus, even for the group of machine-building plants in Novosibirsk, which is one of the oldest centers of machine-building in Siberia and has a widely developed network of higher and secondary specialized educational institutions, approximately one-third of engineering and technical personnel in 1961 had no specialized education.

Job composition of engineering and technical personnel at six Novosibirsk machine-building plants as of January 1, 1961 (in %)⁸⁾

Approximately the same situation is observed at enterprises in the city of Tomsk. For example, at the Tomsk Instrument Plant in 1965, 45.1% of all engineering and technical personnel did not have secondary or higher specialized education⁹⁾. In industry as a whole in the USSR, at the end of 1964 only 65.5% of engineering and technical workers had higher or secondary specialized engineering-technical education¹⁰⁾.

At the same time, a certain portion of specialists with higher and secondary specialized education, owing to existing shortcomings in labor remuneration, work as ordinary workers.

In this connection, the training and rational use of qualified engineering personnel under the conditions of the current scientific and technological revolution is acquiring great practical significance. For Siberia this problem is not new. Its roots go back into the historical past.

This problem became especially urgent for Siberia in the postwar period, since the composition of engineering and technical workers did not correspond to the significant qualitative and quantitative growth of productive forces that had taken place during the prewar five-year plans and especially during the war years. The positions of engineers and technicians were filled mainly by practitioners. In the leading economic region of Siberia—the Kemerovo

⁸⁾ See K. E. Nikolaeva, “Improvement of the Personnel Structure and Questions of Production Organization,” Izvestiya SO AN SSSR (Social Sciences Series), issue 1, 1963, p. 44.

⁹⁾ According to materials of the plant’s personnel department.

¹⁰⁾ V. Komarov, “On the Rational Use of Specialist Personnel,” Voprosy ekonomiki, No. 9, 1966, p. 17.

in the oblast the staff of engineering and technical workers was staffed by certified engineers and technicians by only 35%³. A similar situation existed in other regions⁴. Meanwhile, the influx of specialists from the western regions in the postwar years was insignificant. At the same time, the process of re-evacuation led to a major reduction in qualified personnel in all branches of the national economy and culture⁵.

Taking into account the impossibility of meeting this need for personnel solely by training specialists in full-time faculties, beginning in the mid-1950s the evening and correspondence systems of education began to acquire ever greater importance in the system of training engineering personnel. In the first postwar years they had received little spread and, in their development, encountered major obstacles.

The organization of broad-based training of specialists without interrupting production was hindered to a significant degree by the excessive centralization of correspondence education. The system of all-Union correspondence institutes suffered from serious shortcomings. These were especially felt in remote regions of the country. Branches and consultation centers, separated from their higher educational institutions, could not provide qualified direction of the educational process. At the same time, full-time higher educational institutions, with a substantial staff of professors and lecturers and with educational and material facilities, in effect stood aside from the training of personnel without interrupting production. Correspondence students did not have the opportunity to use laboratories or to attend lectures in full-time higher educational institutions. Suffice it to say that even such a large higher educational institution as the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, which before the war had successfully trained engineering personnel through the correspondence system, was deprived of this possibility for a long time after the war. The correspondence faculty at the institute was closed in 1946 and restored only in 1954⁶. Evening divisions were not created at higher educational institutions even in a number of large industrial centers where there was an appropriate contingent of students⁷. At the same Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, an evening faculty was opened in 1951.

Breaking the departmental approach to personnel training, Party organizations, with the support of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the USSR, in 1956–1958 shifted the center of gravity in the training of specialists without interrupting production to full-time higher educational institutions and secondary specialized educational institutions. In most of them, personnel training was organized according to the full-time, evening, and correspondence systems. This became the beginning of a complex process of intensive development and improvement of the training of specialists without interrupting production. This is clearly demonstrated by the statistical data given below (see the table on p. 8).

The expansion of the network of higher and secondary specialized educational institutions and the development of forms of education without interrupting production corresponded also to the subjective aspirations of working people to master knowledge appropriate to the modern level of technical progress.

Dynamics of the development of full-time and evening education in technical higher educational institutions of Siberia¹⁶

Table

¹⁶ Archive of the Central Statistical Administration under the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, Department of Cultural Statistics, 1958, file 479, fols. 1–70; current archive of the Central Statistical Administration, Department of Cultural Statistics, 1962, grouping of higher educational institutions by branches of the national economy and culture as of the beginning of the 1961/62 academic year, fols. 1–72; current archive of the Central Statistical Administration, 1967, grouping of higher educational institutions by branches of the national economy and culture as of the beginning of the 1966/67 academic year, fols. 1–73.

The ongoing scientific and technological revolution and the process of development of social relations impose heightened demands on the cultural and technical level of working people, on their knowledge and ability to use modern achievements of science and technology in production, for the development and improvement of social production is impossible without improving the subject of labor. The latter is clearly manifested in people’s thoughts and attitudes.

A convincing picture of the influence of the surrounding environment on a person’s psychology and aspirations is revealed by the answers of correspondence students to the question of what served as the motivating reason for their entering a higher educational institution. Of 74 persons, the following answers were given to the questionnaire questions:^17

Thus, almost all the students who answered the questionnaire (with the exception of one) not only feel these new trends in life themselves, but also set themselves the task of raising their qualifications and level of knowledge as a matter of primary importance. The desire to bring greater benefit to society, to keep pace with life, clearly predominates over a person’s personal material motives. Incidentally, at present the material advantages of a specialist who has completed a higher educational institution, in comparison with the position he occupied before entering the institute, are by no means great. Thus, according to the materials of a sociological survey of 36 persons, the wages of specialists who completed a higher educational institution by correspondence increased on average by 22 rubles 30 kopecks per month in comparison with their earnings before entering the institute.^18 However, the desire to study, the aspiration to acquire a broad level of knowledge and higher education, is observed to an unequal degree among persons of different professions. As the data of a sociological survey of evening and correspondence students studying in technical higher educational institutions of the city of Tomsk (TPI, TISI, TIRET) show, among workers (and they constitute 31.1% of the total contingent of correspondence students and 46.2% of the contingent of evening students), it is above all and mainly broad-profile workers who enter the institute: electricians, tool-and-die fitters, electrical mechanics, adjusters, and others, as well as persons of the lower and middle ranks of technical personnel who do not have higher education, chiefly foremen, technicians, and technologists (in the total contingent of students admitted to correspondence study they constitute 42%, and among evening students, 31.4%). And only 16.4% of correspondence students and 9.2% of evening students had held engineering positions before entering the higher educational institution.^19

Thus, 85–90% of the contingent of students receiving engineering education without leaving production are representatives of the rank-and-file and “sergeant” composition of the industrial army of labor and, as representatives of this army themselves note, “life itself, work

^17. Based on the materials of a concrete sociological survey of correspondence students of TPI, conducted by the Department of Scientific Communism in 1965. The answers are recorded as the students themselves formulated them.

^18. Calculated from the materials of the same sociological survey.

^19. The data are given on the basis of the results of a sociological survey of 243 correspondence students of TPI and TIRET and 143 evening students of TPI and TISI, conducted in 1965 by the Department of Scientific Communism of TPI and by senior instructor of the Department of History of the CPSU of TPI G. T. Trubitsyna.

at production, and the desire to bring greater benefit to society” require from them broad and diverse knowledge and an engineering education, although among persons of different professions this is manifested to an unequal degree.

At the same time, under conditions of rapid growth in the network and enrollment of students, the problem of studying the effectiveness of personnel training through the use of various forms of instruction—daytime, evening, and correspondence—acquires urgent significance.

In assessing the effectiveness of these forms of instruction, primary attention is given to the quality of instruction and to the economic aspect of the problem. As was noted in the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On Measures to Improve the Training of Specialists and to Improve the Management of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education in the Country” of 3/IX.1966, the training of specialists in daytime study has fundamental advantages both in the quality of training and in economic considerations. At the same time, this resolution indicates ways of improving the system of training specialists without interrupting their work, the chief of which are improving the quality of instruction and bringing the profile of instruction into conformity with the character of the work of evening and correspondence students. This will make it possible also to increase the economic effectiveness of the training and use of specialists without interrupting production, since economic effectiveness is influenced not only by the cost of directly training a specialist at a higher educational institution, but also by the costs of production connected with the temporary withdrawal from the labor process of persons obtaining an education without interrupting production, as well as by the correspondence between the students’ specialty and the character of their present and future work. This is important to bear in mind because, if one does not take into account the insufficient quality of knowledge of many graduates of evening and correspondence faculties, which negatively affects their work, and the costs of production during the course of their studies, then the direct cost of training specialists without interrupting production in a number of higher educational institutions proves to be cheaper than in daytime study. This is confirmed by the following data, obtained by us for the technical higher educational institutions of the city of Tomsk.

Average annual cost of instruction for one student at technical higher educational institutions of the city of Tomsk²⁰⁾ (in rubles) for 1964–1966

In calculating the cost of student instruction, we proceeded from accounting for expenditures on personnel training both through the higher educational institutions in which the student is studying and through enterprises and organizations (additional leaves with retention of wages for the period of the examination session, preparation and defense of the diploma project, and other payments provided for by Soviet legislation).

²⁰⁾ The table was compiled on the basis of the actual expenditures of the indicated higher educational institutions.

It is not difficult to calculate the total expenditures connected with personnel training at the expense of enterprises and organizations. Difficulties arise, however, in determining the cost of training students in the various forms of study, owing to the absence in higher educational institutions of separate accounting for expenditures by each type of study. Taking into account the existence of different points of view on this question, we shall briefly dwell on the characteristics of the calculation methodology.

While sharing the basic provisions of the methodology set forth by L. I. Tulchinskii⁸, we nevertheless consider it necessary to make a number of substantive comments.

1. In our opinion, L. I. Tulchinskii’s proposal to reduce the total expenditures on a student’s education by the amount of the scientific-research work carried out in the higher educational institution, the cost of which is reflected in the budget estimate of the higher educational institution, is incorrect. A modern higher educational institution is unthinkable without scientific research. It is not only an educational institution, but also a scientific-research institution. Scientific-research work is an indispensable part of the training of the modern engineer. This proposition was reflected in the resolution and was supported by the participants of the First Inter-Institutional Scientific-Methodological Conference, which discussed the problems of students’ scientific work. The task of a higher educational institution, as emphasized in the conference resolutions, is not only to impart to students a certain amount of knowledge necessary for their future practical work, but also to instill a taste for scientific research and initial skills in scientific work. Only in this case will fully qualified specialists emerge from the walls of the higher educational institution, capable of competently solving, from scientific positions, the most complex problems of modern production and of joining the ranks of active fighters for technical progress. At the same time, taking into account the specific nature of training personnel without interrupting production, when evening and correspondence students do not take any substantial part in the scientific-research work conducted by the higher educational institution, it is apparently advisable to include the amount of expenditures on scientific research only in the cost of training full-time faculty students and postgraduate students; otherwise higher educational institutions in which scientific-research work is poorly developed will find themselves in an advantageous position.

2. L. I. Tulchinskii’s recommendation is untenable in proposing that expenditures on capital investments (construction of new educational, production, and residential buildings) and the acquisition of equipment and inventory (educational, economic, laboratory) be counted in the cost of training a student only within the limits of 2.2–2.5% of the balance-sheet value of fixed assets⁹. It seems to us that Comrade Tulchinskii’s proposal is acceptable only with respect to including in student-training costs the value of educational and residential buildings, since, by analogy with other branches of the economy where the practice of depreciation deductions exists, the depreciation rates established by the current regulation for stone, large-block, and frame buildings of nonproduction purpose are set at 2.2–2.5%.

The use of this norm for charging to the cost of education expenditures on equipment and inventory (and these constitute a significant share of the fixed assets of technical higher educational institutions, for example, at the Tomsk Poly—

at the technical institute, the cost of modern installations and equipment alone exceeds 30 million rubles) would lead to an obvious understatement of the share of this item of expenditure in the total costs of instruction. The current pace of scientific and technological progress is such that new models of machine tools are put into production every 5–6 years. Chemical processes are modernized at approximately the same rate; still more rapid rates are observed in the branches of instrument making and automation equipment, radio electronics, and other modern branches of industry¹⁰. Therefore, in order for higher educational institutions to graduate specialists equipped with the newest knowledge in the field of science and technology, it is necessary systematically to equip them with the latest equipment, instruments, and measuring apparatus, removing from the armament of science morally obsolete models. Meanwhile, the depreciation rates proposed by T. Tulchinsky (taking renovation expenditures into account) orient one toward using equipment and inventory for 100–120 years. Their untenability is obvious.

At the same time, taking into account the urgency of the problem under consideration, which requires special research, it seems to us that, temporarily, until it is resolved in theory, in practice one may use the current norms of depreciation deductions approved by the Council of Ministers of the USSR of 1/IX-1961, No. 802, which provide for depreciation rates of 14% for laboratory equipment and instruments, 19% for accounting and computing machines, 12% for other measuring and regulating instruments and devices, and 13% for production and household inventory.

It is obvious that these rates of deductions may be applied only to buildings, equipment, and inventory entered on the balance sheet.

1. It cannot be considered correct to include dormitory maintenance expenditures in the cost of daytime instruction alone. Taking into account the annual summons of correspondence students to examination sessions and the granting to them of the right to use dormitories, it would be more justified to distribute dormitory maintenance expenditures at ratios of 1.0 for daytime students and 0.1 for correspondence students.

2. Finally, when distributing the expenditures of a higher educational institution among the different forms of instruction, it seems to us that one should also take into account the institution’s expenditures on training postgraduate students, reducing by the corresponding amount the magnitude of the costs attributable to the training of students. This is especially important to bear in mind at large institutions of the type of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, where hundreds of postgraduate students undergo training.

The authors of the present article were guided by the considerations indicated above in determining the cost of training one student by the various forms of instruction.

As the table cited earlier shows, despite the difference in the cost of personnel training in the city’s higher educational institutions, due above all to differences in specialties, the general tendency characterizing the difference in the cost of training an engineer in daytime, evening, and correspondence faculties appears very clearly.

However, the actual costs of personnel training will not be fully accurate if one does not take into account the increased attrition of evening and correspondence students compared with daytime faculties. Thus, for the indicated educational institutions, the average percentage of attrition in 1964 was 6.23% for daytime faculties, 7.71% for evening faculties, and—

9.1%. By individual educational institutions it ranged from 5.3% in the full-time faculties of TPI to 18.0% in the correspondence faculty of the Institute of Radioelectronics and Electronic Engineering. As a result, the average graduation of students of TPI’s correspondence faculty in 1963 and 1964 amounted to 48.6% of the total number of correspondence students admitted in 1957 and 1958, whereas in the full-time faculties the proportion of those graduating reaches 65–75% of the total number admitted to study¹¹.

Naturally, the existence of a substantial dropout rate among students raises the cost of training specialists for the national economy, especially in evening and correspondence faculties.

In calculating the cost of instruction it is also necessary to take into account the difference in the duration of study. If formally the period of study is five years for full-time students and six years for students of evening and correspondence faculties, then in fact, as the practice of training personnel through the system of evening and correspondence education in Tomsk higher educational institutions shows, the majority of evening and correspondence students, for various reasons (academic leaves due to illness, family and other circumstances, poor academic performance, etc.), do not complete their studies within the prescribed period. According to the data of the sociological study we conducted, the average period of study for TPI evening students is 7.5 years, and for correspondence students—7 years and 7 months.

This circumstance substantially increases the cost of educating a student without withdrawal from production over the entire period of his study at a higher educational institution, although it is difficult to calculate this increase accurately to within one ruble. The cost of personnel training is affected by the existence of repeat-year students and students with unsatisfactory progress (in all forms of study). However, this is an important question deserving special consideration, and therefore we cannot dwell on its characterization in the present article.

Finally, if we speak of the effectiveness of personnel training through various forms of study from the national-economic point of view, the picture will be incomplete unless we consider the age composition of persons graduating from higher educational institutions through full-time, evening, and correspondence study. This is necessary in order to take into account the different periods of return on the knowledge obtained by students in higher educational institutions in their future practical work in their specialty. Taking into account that a student of the full-time faculties graduates from higher technical educational institutions in the overwhelming majority of cases at the age of 23–24, while students of evening faculties, according to the results of our study, do so at the age of 30, and correspondence students at the age of 31, respectively, we shall have the following periods of return (see the table on p. 14).

Let us note in passing that in recent years there has been a clearly emerging tendency toward a rejuvenation of students studying without withdrawal from production.

On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that evening and correspondence students often begin engineering work directly even before graduating from a higher educational institution. Thus, according to the results of our sociological study, among fifth-year students, engineering positions were held by 56% of the total contingent of correspondence students and 65% of evening students. In addition, it should

one must bear in mind that a significant share of evening and correspondence students are participants in the movement for communist labor (62% of the number of students surveyed) and take an active part in rationalization and invention (30.5% of the surveyed contingent of students).

Lengths of time specialists work in production after graduation from a higher educational institution²⁵⁾ (in years)

Consequently, the period of practical return for the national economy from the knowledge obtained at the higher educational institution by evening and correspondence students must be increased by approximately 2–3 years, i.e., the return from evening and correspondence students occurs earlier than from students graduating from the day faculties of a higher educational institution. Moreover, for specialists graduating from day faculties, a certain period is required in order to “grow into” the process of production activity, into their engineering specialty. This circumstance naturally somewhat shortens the period of return for the national economy from the knowledge they obtained at the higher educational institution.

Thus, the difference we noted earlier in the periods of return to society from the knowledge obtained at the higher educational institution for students of different forms of study will be small.

The merit of training personnel without interrupting production is that they remain attached to production²⁶⁾, which is especially important for the eastern regions of the country, taking into account the previously noted high turnover among engineering and technical workers. The economic advantage of training engineers without interrupting production should also be seen in the fact that this category of workers, in the overwhelming majority of cases, already has living space at the place of work. These people have grown into their specialty, the interests of the production collective, and have settled in a permanent place of residence in the given populated locality. And if one takes into account that evening and correspondence students, during almost the entire period of study at the higher educational institution, continue to take part in the process of social production, and consequently also in the creation of surplus product (participants in the sphere of material production) and in satisfying the corresponding needs of the population and of the national economy (participants in the nonproductive sphere), then, in essence, through their participation in socially useful labor, even during their period of study at the higher educational institution, they reimburse society for all the costs (if one proceeds on average from a 100-percent norm of surplus product) connected with their education.

²⁵⁾ The table was compiled from questionnaire data of 3,520 students.
²⁶⁾ According to data from some Tomsk enterprises, for example TIZ, approximately only 50% of graduates of day faculties remain in production.

One cannot ignore such a social aspect of this problem as the possibility for all categories of production personnel to obtain higher education, which was a consequence of bringing the higher-education system closer to production. This is an important condition for the all-round development of the individual and attests to the democratic character of the Soviet system of education.

However, the national-economic effectiveness of the training and practical work of engineering personnel is determined not only by the cost of their education and by the periods for which these specialists are used in production after graduation from a higher educational institution, but also by qualitative indicators of their work, which are largely determined by the level of knowledge acquired at the higher educational institution. Therefore, in analyzing the economic effectiveness of different forms of instruction, one must in no case abstract from another most important criterion—the quality of instruction.

A study of this question in the higher educational institutions of Tomsk shows that the quality of knowledge of evening students and especially of correspondence students is considerably lower than the quality of knowledge of students in day faculties.

Thus, the absolute academic performance of students at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, the largest in the country, according to the results of the spring examination sessions, is as follows.

Absolute academic performance of students (in %)

The substantially lower academic performance of students in evening and correspondence faculties, compared with the performance of students studying away from production, is also observed in other higher educational institutions of the city of Tomsk.

An even more reliable picture of the quality of students’ knowledge in the various forms of instruction can be seen on the basis of the average grade for knowledge demonstrated during examination sessions.

Average grade for students’ knowledge at TIRiET

If one adds to this that in the examination session of the 1965/66 academic year, 31.6% of evening students and 39.5% of correspondence students were not certified (to a significant extent because they failed to appear for the session due to lack of preparation for the examinations)²⁷⁾, then the fact of the low quality of knowledge of students studying without leaving production becomes obvious.

²⁷⁾ In the day faculties, 1.9% of students were not certified in all subjects.

In practical terms, this means that the lower cost of educating students without interrupting their employment through the system of evening and, especially, correspondence study—despite all their outward attractiveness—often cannot compensate for the substantial shortcomings in the quality of instruction.

The low level of knowledge among a considerable portion of evening and correspondence students is due to a number of reasons.

Students studying without interrupting their employment devote clearly insufficient time to the principal condition for acquiring and assimilating the necessary knowledge: independent work on the course material. A selective survey of students showed that, whereas students in full-time departments, in addition to 30–36 hours of compulsory classes per week, spend 20–25 hours on independent preparation, evening students, in addition to 16 hours of classes at the higher educational institution, spend on average 14–15 hours per week on independent work. Correspondence students devote even less time to study. Thus, in the complete absence of compulsory classes (not counting several survey lectures in each subject during the examination session), according to the data of the survey we conducted, they devote on average 15–20 hours per week to independent work.

The volume of theoretical knowledge, as the basic condition determining the process of comprehensive, profound, and creative comprehension of knowledge and its application in practical activity, is small among evening students and especially among correspondence students. This is explained by the reduced amount of time allotted for mastering the scope of curricula analogous to those of full-time departments. As a rule, there are no acceptable differentiated methods of instruction for evening and correspondence departments.

The need for uniform requirements in assessing the knowledge of students in different forms of study is well known and universally recognized. In practice, however, among a considerable portion of the faculty there is a lowering of requirements when assessing the knowledge of evening and correspondence students. This circumstance psychologically disposes a certain portion of students toward a superficial attitude to studying the curriculum. Finally, there are difficulties caused by the students’ production and public activity: employment at work, irregularity in the operation of individual enterprises, which forces students of the evening department to miss classes at the end of the month, frequent official travel assignments for individual students, overburdening with public duties, and so on.

Thus, the study of the problem of training personnel without interrupting their employment indicates that the Party’s course toward bringing the system of higher education closer to production has important economic and social significance. But the insufficient level of knowledge among a considerable portion of students studying without interrupting their employment must cause serious concern, for, lacking the necessary stock of theoretical knowledge, this category of specialists, under conditions of a rapidly developing technical process, will in a number of cases prove unable to head technical progress in production.

The question of training specialists through various forms of study deserves serious attention and further investigation in order to work out the optimal proportions of different forms of personnel training and to develop effective methods of instructing students receiving higher education through the system of evening and correspondence study.

It seems to us that, in this respect, certain considerations can already be expressed. Taking into account the objective difficulties for the majority of students studying without interrupting their employment in obtaining

…of fundamental theoretical knowledge, and timely is the directive of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the preferential training of personnel for the national economy through the system of full-time education. Without interrupting production, it appears advisable to train engineers mainly in applied specialties, taking into account the production experience acquired by students. Since evening and correspondence students need the creation of additional conditions that help increase the time budget allotted to study, a radical measure in this regard is the transition to a five-day working week. In our view, it would be useful to make broader use of the experience of the Likhachev Plant, the essence of which comes down to a weekly alternation of work in production with study at a higher educational institution. Compared with evening study, this form of instruction differs in that organized groups of working students replace one another in production and make it possible to use equipment fully. Their receptiveness increases, since instruction takes place not in the evening, after the working day, but under normal conditions; and, finally, the time of class sessions increases from 16 to 18 hours per week, as does the time for independent work at home.

It seems useful to us to study more deeply the experience of organizing a network of general-technical faculties in industrial centers and at large industrial enterprises; where there is a large contingent of students, to organize duplicate class sessions for students in the lower years of evening faculties; and to permit students of correspondence faculties to take credits and examinations on a sliding schedule throughout the entire academic year. This is of great significance not only for students, but also for the organization of the normal economic activity of enterprises.

It cannot be regarded as normal that Tomsk still lacks a specialized dormitory for correspondence students of all the city’s higher educational institutions.

Improving the training of engineering personnel, as an important condition for implementing the Party line aimed at accelerating technical progress and increasing the efficiency of social production, is a primary task of all parts of the higher-education system and of Party and Soviet bodies.

1. See V. P. Aleksandrov, “Some Questions of the Development of Higher and Secondary Specialized Schools in Siberia,” in the collection On Certain Questions of Strengthening the Role of Science in the Construction of Communism (materials for a scientific-practical conference), Novosibirsk, 1965, p. 161. ↩

2. See V. P. Aleksandrov, “Some Questions of the Development of Higher and Secondary Specialized Schools in Siberia,” in On Certain Questions of Strengthening the Role of Science in the Construction of Communism (materials for a scientific-practical conference), Novosibirsk, 1965, p. 161. ↩

3. Central Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU, fond 17, op. 5, file 860, sheet 172. ↩

4. Ibid., fond 17, op. 5, file 860, sheet 40; op. 6, file 46, sheet 276; op. 7, file 951, sheet 38, etc. ↩

5. Ibid., fond 17, op. 6, file 1389, sheet 23. ↩

6. Library of TPI. Report on the faculties, specialties, and departments of the institute (1900–1960), sheet 7. ↩

7. Central State Archive of the October Revolution of the USSR, fond 9396, op. 1, file 230, sheet 168, data as of the beginning of 1949. ↩

8. See L. I. Tulchinskii, “Once Again on the Economics of Higher Education,” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, No. 5, 1965, pp. 72–77, and also “Questions of the Methodology for Calculating the Cost of Training a Specialist in a Higher Educational Institution,” in the collection Organization and Effectiveness of the Scientific Work of Students of Higher Educational Institutions (Materials for the First Inter-Institutional Scientific-Methodological Conference), Tomsk, 1967, pp. 46–55. ↩

9. See Organization and Effectiveness of the Scientific Work of Students of Higher Educational Institutions, Tomsk, 1967, p. 47. ↩

10. For example, in the plan of enterprises of instrument making and automation equipment for 1967, 22% of the production volume consists of newly introduced products. See Ekonomicheskaya gazeta, No. 8, 1967, pp. 4–5. ↩

11. In the country as a whole, higher educational institutions in 1964 graduated 46.5% of those admitted to correspondence study in 1958 (see the journal Vestnik vysshei shkoly, No. 7, 1965, p. 85, i.e., B. M. Remennikova, “On the Comparative Effectiveness of Forms of Study”). According to I. D. Samoilova, the Moscow Machine-Tool and Power Engineering Institutes in the 1963/64 academic year graduated 59% of the students admitted to the first year in 1959; in the evening faculty, 40.7% of students graduate on time, and in the correspondence faculty—32.6% (see the journal Vestnik vysshei shkoly, No. 9, 1965, pp. 16–17, the article “Which Form of Specialist Training Is More Effective?”). ↩