Proceedings
of the Tomsk Order of the Red Banner of Labor
Polytechnic Institute named after S. M. Kirov

Volume 181
1967

Current Issues in Student Research

L. A. Gorbunova, I. F. Livshits, D. N. Prikhodko

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

The multifaceted process by which science is transformed into a direct productive force of society—in particular, the breaking down of the boundary between science and production—lends ever greater urgency to the problem of scientific personnel. This problem extends beyond the confines of scientific institutions and higher educational establishments. It must now be addressed with respect to production as well. Under the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution, production places new demands on the subject of labor in general and especially on engineering and technical workers, whose share in the sphere of material production is steadily increasing. Modern production requires a broadly trained engineer, with deep grounding in the natural sciences and with certain inclinations as a researcher, which would help him contribute to scientific and technological progress.

In this connection, a new task is set before higher education, which must stay ahead of production: to equip all its students not only with a stock of concrete knowledge, but also with the scientific method and with skills in research work.

The solution of this task does not contradict, but directly promotes, the solution of another fundamental problem of higher education: the growth of scientific potential and the gradual transformation of the higher educational institution into an educational-scientific institution.

Student research work lies within the mainstream of those social problems that our society is solving today. It contributes to the harmonious development of the personality, to the strengthening of creativity and moral incentives in labor, and to the transformation of labor into a primary vital need.

Thus, from a particular issue this problem becomes a weighty social task. Therefore, of great theoretical and practical interest is a concrete analysis of the ways, methods, and forms of bringing students into scientific research, as well as a generalization of the experience of organizing student research work. The urgent need for a theoretical analysis of the extensive practical groundwork created by higher educational institutions in recent years is evidenced by the first inter-university scientific-methodological conference on questions of organizing student research work (Tomsk, February 1967).

The purpose of the present article is, using the example of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, to reveal the tendencies in the development of student research work and to draw attention to the contradic—

...and inhibiting factors; to pose a number of questions requiring further study and testing.

The object of the study—the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute—cannot raise doubts, since it is a multi-profile higher educational institution training specialists for branches of new technology. The patterns of development of modern science are vividly manifested in it. The institute has established stable traditions in organizing students’ scientific-research work. Moreover, the very fact that the organization of the 1st scientific-methodological conference was entrusted to the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute testifies to a certain recognition of its experience.

The Department of Scientific Communism, within the scope of its scholarly theme, beginning with the 1964/65 academic year, has been analyzing the experience of TPI in organizing students’ scientific-research work. In this direction, the organization of SSRSW at departments, problem laboratories, and research institutes of TPI was studied; an experimental concrete-sociological study was conducted, covering 602 senior students; a discussion of the problems of students’ scientific work was organized in the pages of the large-circulation newspaper Za kadry¹). The concluding part of the study was the conference “Your Place in Search and Experiment”²).

Leading teachers and student activists of SSRSW took part in the discussion and in the conference.

All these materials formed the basis of the institute’s report to the board of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR in June 1966, which approved its experience in organizing students’ scientific-research work³).

Students’ scientific-research work at TPI began to develop especially effectively in the second half of the 1950s. This process is proceeding intensively, but with great difficulties and contradictions. We see a partial explanation of this in the spontaneous nature of the development of students’ scientific work, in the absence of theoretical comprehension of it. Students’ scientific-research work is a multifaceted, many-sided, theoretical and practical problem. Its pivotal question is the new content of SSRSW, the acquisition of which has, in recent years, been turning into a stable tendency in the country’s large technical higher educational institutions.

Traditionally, students’ scientific work in a higher educational institution was understood as involving a limited number of students in creative research outside class time, with the aim of preparing a scientific replacement generation. Now the growing needs of scientific and technological progress for scientific personnel in production require higher education to instill definite research skills in every graduate. This task can be solved only on the condition that scientific work is regarded as an organic constituent part of the educational process.

The expansion of the content of SSRSW manifests itself especially effectively in technical higher educational institutions. This is evidenced by such an important process as the advancement of students’ educational-research work (SERW) to the role of the leading direction in the organization of students’ scientific creativity.

Forms of educational-research work can encompass the entire mass of senior students; they do not require additional time in the very limited time budget of the student, do not require efforts to organize students outside the educational process, nor additional scientific supervision. Moreover—and this is the main thing—scientific-research...

¹) See the newspaper Za kadry, 1965, March–April, Nos. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.
²) See the newspaper Za kadry, 27 October 1965, No. 33.
³) TPI, current archive, orders of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR, 2 Aug. 1966, No. 357-A.

research work within the framework of the educational process acts as a well-thought-out system of instruction from the first to the final year, where every section of academic work is intended to foster the engineer-researcher.

The data from the questionnaire survey mentioned above indicate that the majority of fourth- and fifth-year students of TPI consider educational research work to be the main direction in the development of SRWS. It is evidently no accident that 87% of those participating in SRWS, when asked “What forms of SRWS do you consider effective?” named various forms of ERWS.

Certain traditions in ERWS have taken shape at the institute. At a number of departments and even faculties, a system of instruction is being created in which classes and SRWS merge into a single complex. More than half of the full-time faculties have introduced SRWS into the academic timetable. The most widespread forms include laboratory practicums with research content, term papers and especially diploma research papers and projects, practical training in production with a research character, and the work of students who combine good and excellent study with scientific research according to individual plans. For example, students of the Department of Technology of Basic Organic Synthesis are successfully engaged in searching for methods of extracting and using substances from the wastes of coke-chemical plants.

Students specializing at the Department of Chemical Technology of Fuels are developing the problem of using peat in industry and agriculture. Each fourth-year student receives a specific assignment. He carries it out under the supervision of a member of the department, a problem laboratory, or a postgraduate student. The student’s duties include studying domestic and foreign literature on a specific question, writing and defending a report at the department’s scientific seminar, creating the appropriate installation, and conducting experiments to obtain laboratory samples. Often the research continues during the period of diploma design and is completed with a diploma thesis or project.

The experience of involving students in scientific work according to the academic timetable has shown that, in addition to mandatory theoretical and engineering training in his field, a student must have definite knowledge in the area of the methodology of science, research methods, conducting experiments, and processing materials. In short, it is also necessary, in a special plan, to prepare the student for independent scientific-research work. In this respect, the initiative of the Geological Prospecting Faculty of TPI in introducing the special course “Fundamentals of Scientific Research” deserves attention. This once again confirms the proposition that instilling research skills in students through the educational process is being undertaken thoroughly at many departments and faculties.

In parallel, the practice of educational research work was developing in a number of leading higher educational institutions. Therefore, the 1st inter-institutional conference on the organization of students’ scientific research work recommended to the country’s higher technical educational institutions the introduction of scientific work into the educational process as the most effective and progressive means of instilling in students the skills of an engineer-researcher. “Educational research work of students (ERWS),” the conference resolution states, “is one of the most effective forms of instilling research skills in all students and corresponds most fully to the task of training and educating a highly qualified engineer”¹.

The adoption of such a decision by the conference does not mean that the development of educational-research work will proceed automatically. It is not only a matter of the need for extensive organizational work. What is needed is a comprehensive elaboration of the questions of the new content of SRWS. This situation is also dictated by the tenacity of the traditional approach to students’ scientific work in the old conception, sometimes by a lack of understanding of who primarily determines the scope and success of students’ research work, and which forms of SRWS should therefore be regarded as promising and most appropriate in a higher educational institution. It is clear that a correct understanding in this respect will help concentrate the efforts of the institute’s collective and the Komsomol organization on the main direction and thereby on the optimal solution of the problem of SRWS.

The objective picture of the development of students’ scientific research testifies to its very close connection with the state of scientific work in the departments and in other scientific collectives of the institute. The scope of the scientific work of the teaching staff of TPI in the 1950s led, by 1965, to the creation of 8 problem laboratories and 6 research institutes, 5 of which are managed on a voluntary basis⁵. These large scientific associations made it possible to expand the framework for involving students in scientific research. Thus, the Research Institute of Solid-State Physics, created in 1965, drew 150 senior students into work on the collective’s scientific problems⁶.

Consequently, the only ones who can develop students’ scientific-research work in accordance with modern requirements for it—in the sense of instilling research skills in all students—are the departments, problem laboratories, and research institutes existing within the higher educational institution. Only the scientific research of these structural subdivisions is the objective basis on which students’ scientific-research work can be developed. It is therefore no accident that where scientific workers conduct broad and effective research, there is also a well-established SRWS. Examples include many departments of the Faculty of Chemical Technology, the Faculty of Physics and Technology, the Faculty of Mining, the Department of Electrical Drive and Industrial Electronics of the Electromechanical Faculty, and others. At the Faculty of Chemical Technology, for example, in 1965, 316 students worked on the topics of departments and problem laboratories⁷.

Defining educational-research work of students as the leading tendency of SRWS can make the choice of the form of students’ scientific work outside the educational process conscious and most effective.

The correct form organically follows from the general tasks of scientific-research work, from the scope and specificity of the research of a department, research institute, or problem laboratory, and promotes the development of SRWS. It clearly reveals the benefits of involving students in scientific research both for the students themselves and for scientific collectives. By making the most effective use of students’ knowledge and hands and of the material base of the departments, such a form of organizing SRWS is, as a rule, viable.

To a considerable extent, the failure of many SDBs in our institute is explained by the fact that they were an incorrectly chosen form. The collapse of some of them caused enormous moral damage. Skepticism toward scientific-research work in general increased among a certain portion of students and department instructors. Therefore the question of choosing forms within which one can educate a research engineer must be approached very seriously. To give in to the fashionable—

⁵. Report on the institute’s scientific-research activity for 1965, p. 1.
⁶. Ibid., p. 83.
⁷. Ibid., p. 76.

…in the current practice, mechanically copying even positive experience, failing to take into account the scope of the department’s scientific research, and not caring about the improvement of forms sometimes means immediately dooming student research work to failure, inflicting moral damage on this responsible cause.

In the organization of students’ research work, alongside the educational process, a certain amount of experience has been accumulated in higher educational institutions. The most widespread forms have been student scientific circles, student design bureaus (SDBs), and the participation of students in carrying out contract-based work of research collectives. They developed over the years, became traditional, and include a large mass of students. Forms such as SDBs, although they appeared only recently, became popular and spread very quickly. Student questionnaires also testify to their popularity. One third of those surveyed consider SDBs the most active form of student research work outside the educational process.

And yet, despite the broad recognition and spread of such forms of scientific creativity outside class time, they cannot be regarded as isolated from the educational process. The task is to bring this kind of research work as close as possible to the educational process. The experience of a number of higher educational institutions—the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, the Kaunas Polytechnic Institute—reveals the concrete mechanism of such rapprochement.

The organization of scientific work outside class time is especially important in the lower years. It should prepare students for conducting serious scientific research, introduce them to the atmosphere of the institute’s scientific life, and instill a taste for collective scientific work. Thus, for example, report-and-discussion circles created in the lower years by general departments are intended to give students the theoretical knowledge whose lack they feel when engaging in scientific work in the upper years. This is explained by the fact that the programs of general-education disciplines are not always drawn up with due regard for the specific character of the specialties. For example, students of the GRF write in their questionnaires that such disciplines as chemistry and mathematics are given in isolation from geology. Examples of this kind are not isolated. This served as the basis for 44% of students engaged in SRW to answer negatively to the questionnaire question of whether the level of theoretical knowledge is sufficient for research work.

It follows from this that the general departments must find their place in activating student research work. They must help lower-year students broaden their knowledge in the natural sciences with the aid of various report-and-discussion circles. Even foreign-language departments in a technical higher educational institution can contribute to the development of students’ scientific research. Experiencing an acute need in the upper years to read foreign journals, students do not possess sufficient translation skills for this. Only 22% of fifth-year students engaged in SRW were able to answer affirmatively the questionnaire question: “Do you read foreign scientific literature?”

Thus, we believe that a radical solution to the problem of student research work lies in educational-research work. This in no way diminishes the various forms of involving students in scientific work outside the educational process. Educational-research work is the leading tendency that is making its way into life. We did not misspeak: it is precisely making its way. The point is that even in leading higher educational institutions it has not yet become an integral part of the entire system of engineer training. Educational-research work is based only on the initiative of departments and has not become the norm in the life of higher educational institutions.

Naturally, there can be no standardized approach here, since not all higher educational institutions are ready for the broad introduction of educational-research work. But where the conditions exist, educational-research work must become an organic component of the entire system for training young specialists. And the decisive word here belongs to the Mi—

by the Ministry of Higher Education, which should legalize the recommendations of the First Inter-University Scientific-Methodological Conference on the generalization of experience in the development of students’ research work.

In particular, the need has become ripe:

1) for the Ministry to legalize the introduction of students’ research work into the class schedule and, accordingly, to provide for it in curricula;

2) for the criterion of a department’s work to become not only students’ academic performance, but also the organization within it of students’ scientific research. For this it is necessary to develop objective methods for evaluating students’ scientific research;

3) for the duty of the student to engage in scientific work to be fixed in the section “students” of the Statute of higher educational institutions;

4) for the role and duties of problem laboratories and research institutes in students’ scientific work to be defined in a special clause of the Statute of higher educational institutions.

Scientific creativity, like all creativity in general, is successful when it appears as a conscious interest. That is, students must feel the need for scientific work, see its results, and understand the social significance of science and the specific nature of scientific labor.

Judging by the fact that the number of students engaged in research work increases from year to year, one may consider that in higher educational institutions a generally correct public opinion is being formed around the sphere of scientific activity and students’ participation in research work. Thus, students of TPI, in their majority, correctly understand the social significance of science, highly value the labor of the scientist and his position in society, and many of them strive to join their ranks.

The results of a concrete sociological study conducted at Purdue University in the United States may serve as a sharp contrast to this. To the question “What is your attitude toward the activity of a scientist?” the answers were mainly negative; students associated their attitude toward scientific activity with the allegedly low moral qualities of scientists: it is impossible to be a scientist and create a normal family (30%); it is impossible to be a scientist and remain an honest person (9%); scientists are superfluous people in society (25%); scientists have no time to enjoy life (28%), etc. L. Hafstad, vice president of the research center of the General Motors Corporation, who cites these data in the article “Science, Technology, and Society,” writes: “This is a devastating commentary either on scientists, or on education, or on both. With such an attitude among students, it is hardly surprising that we are experiencing a shortage of scientists and engineers”^8).

Such answers by students concerning the role and place of science and of the scientist in society are a serious accusation not against young people, but against the social system that has turned scientists and science into a force hostile to the interests of the majority of the members of society.

A comparison of our data with the conclusions of the sociological study at Purdue University testifies to the richer spiritual world of Soviet students and to their more modern views on life.

But it does not follow from this that all students of our higher educational institution have a positive attitude toward research work and correctly understand their place in this sphere of activity.

As was indicated, in many faculties research work has been introduced into the class schedule in the senior years. And, strange as it may seem, a survey of fifth-year students

8) Advanced Management, November, 1957, vol. 22, No. 11, p. 10.

these faculties showed that not all students believe that they participate in student research work. To the question: “Are you engaged in scientific work?” only 74% of fifth-year students of the Engineering Physics Faculty answered affirmatively, 63.1% at the Chemical Technology Faculty, and 91.8% at the Mining Faculty. Evidently, the students who answered this question negatively are not informed about the nature of the work they are doing, or else what they do according to the academic schedule does not, in their opinion, have the character of scientific research.

The opinion of a fifth-year student of the Engineering Physics Faculty—that “only the most gifted students should engage in scientific work”—contradicts the motto “to every engineer, the skills of a researcher.”

What is erroneous in this assertion? It is well known that a person’s abilities are not so much a biological factor as a social one. They develop in the process of study and creative activity. The democratic nature of the Soviet system of education consists precisely in the fact that it makes it possible to identify and develop abilities in all students. This also applies to scientific creativity.

In this connection, one cannot agree with the statement of another student of the Engineering Physics Faculty: “Students first need to be given a taste for and an interest in scientific work.” Of course, fostering interest is an important problem. Various techniques and methods are possible here. But it seems to us that a taste and interest arise above all in the process of scientific creativity.

From all that has been said it follows that the question of creating proper public opinion around science, scientific labor, and attracting students to it has not lost its relevance. This is an important psychological factor, one of the moral incentives. In this connection, we would like to put forward a number of proposals that follow from students’ statements and from our observations.

First, departments, problem laboratories, and research institutes from time to time promote their scientific themes, acquaint students with the results of scientific research and with the essence of unresolved problems in one or another branch of science. But it is necessary to ensure that from the very first year the student is surrounded by the scientific atmosphere that prevails in the department, in the problem laboratory, and in the research institute. Perhaps Saturday and Sunday lectures or round-table meetings with scholars in the corresponding specialty or field should be introduced.

Second, Komsomol groups and bureaus often play a passive role in propaganda. They do not show initiative in organizing such work. Take, for example, the two-day reporting exhibition of scientific works carried out at the institute and organized in the spring semester of the past academic year. It is hard to name any Komsomol group organizer who led his Komsomol members to the exhibition and, with the help of instructors, organized its discussion. Yet the benefit from this would have been very great. Thematic Komsomol meetings can be held on these questions. Other forms of work are also possible. In a word, a well-thought-out system of educational work in this area is needed.

Third, since the task is set: “For every student to acquire the skills of an engineer-researcher,” naturally, the student must have an idea of the student research work being conducted in production. We posed the question to students: “How do you imagine scientific work in production?” And it turned out that even fifth-year students, for the most part, have no conception of this. At the Mechanical Faculty, of 73 students surveyed, 58 did not answer the question; at the Mining Faculty, of 49 students, 22 still do not have a concrete idea of their participation in scientific work, and 21 people did not answer the question. This is a typical picture.

Meanwhile, almost no concrete measures are being taken in this area. Evidently, for this purpose one can use the extended

practical training, meetings with production workers and especially with graduates of the higher educational institution. Such work must be concrete in nature, and it should be conducted by the specialized departments jointly with public organizations.

A worthy place in the intensification of student research work should be occupied by the higher-education Komsomol. From the example of our institute one can be convinced of the beneficial influence of the Komsomol organization on the development of student research work. On its initiative the Student Scientific Society was reorganized. Student research committees became an integral component of the organizational structure of the Komsomol. But recently not entirely healthy views have begun to appear regarding the place of the Komsomol in organizing students’ scientific work. They sometimes give rise to empty showmanship, to a failure to understand that the leading place in developing students’ research skills and in organizing student research work belongs, as indicated, to scientific collectives.

It seems to us that the Komsomol organization still has an enormous field of activity. This includes creating proper public opinion around student research work, maintaining ties with departments and other scientific institutions, with production, organizing exhibitions, conferences, debates, and comparative analysis of the organization of student research work by departments and faculties. All this must be directed toward increasing the effectiveness of students’ scientific work.

1. See the newspaper Za kadry, March 22, 1967, No. 23. ↩