On the Content of University Programs for Student Education

I. F. Davydov

The reproduction of highly qualified personnel is a complex, multifaceted process which, naturally, is not limited to the formation of knowledge, abilities, and skills, but has as its consequence the development of the individual as a subject of new social relations.

This function of higher education is acquiring ever greater weight in society. The search for ways of realizing it optimally has important social significance.

In this respect, the attempts of many higher educational institutions in the country to plan educational work in accordance with programs of education are of definite theoretical and practical interest. Programs of education reflect the Party’s line in the communist education of the members of socialist society, which has found concrete embodiment in the Program of the CPSU, in the decisions of the Twenty-Third Congress and of the April Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1968). They also proceed from the intensification of ideological struggle at the present stage in the development of the world revolutionary process.

The purpose of programs of education is, first, to differentiate the goals, tasks, and means of education; second, to differentiate the responsibilities of the subject of education at all levels; third, to promote the social orientation of students in the most diverse

personal qualities and the formation of value orientations reflecting the norms and ideals of the intelligentsia of socialist society and, finally, to promote the individualization of education by means of an organic combination of social forms of influence on the student’s personality and self-education.

Educational programs are aimed at increasing the effectiveness of the higher-education system of upbringing, and this can be achieved only by overcoming substantial shortcomings in the educational process. They are typical of many higher educational institutions in the country. In generalized form they may be formulated as follows:

1) there exists a certain gap between the instructional process, scholarly work, and upbringing; upbringing is not infrequently regarded as something separate from the instructional and scholarly processes;

2) purposefulness and consistency in the educational influence exerted on the student are not always ensured, depending on the content, methods, and forms of instructional and educational work in each year of study;

3) there is no clear division of functions among all the elements of the subject of upbringing, nor a firmly grounded interconnection among them, especially between departments and administrative bodies, on the one hand, and public organizations, on the other;

4) there is no purposeful system of measures for students’ professional orientation within the higher educational institution, beginning with the first year, which does not develop in the lower years an interest in mastering the profession and thereby diminishes the educational, scholarly, and other aspects of students’ social activity;

5) to a large extent there is no individual approach to the student’s personality, which is largely explained by disregard of the principles of upbringing and by poor information about the student according to year of study, specialty, and age; about his interests, inclinations, and abilities.

The existence of programs and plans for upbringing, discussed in higher-education collectives and sanctioned by party committees and rectorates, is undoubtedly a positive phenomenon. This has already been noted in the literature¹. But it must be borne in mind that the programs have not only much in common, but also much that is different. The difference lies not only in the specific character—which, of course, must be revealed—but also in the approach to the problem, in scope, in content, and in structure. Therefore it seems to us that the primary task is a theoretical comprehension of these documents, their analysis according to

the most important parameters, in order to establish the initial principles and criteria. It goes without saying that this will be of significance for practice, for the further improvement of the management of the process of educating students.

This article attempts to analyze the educational programs of a number of major higher educational institutions of the country, namely: the Altai Polytechnic Institute²), the Kiev Polytechnic Institute³), Kiev State University⁴), the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute⁵), the Leningrad Mechanical Institute⁶), the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute⁷), Leningrad State University⁸), the Novosibirsk Institute of Railway Engineers⁹), the Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute¹⁰), the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute¹¹), Tomsk State University¹²), the Ural Polytechnic Institute¹³), and the Chelyabinsk Polytechnic Institute¹⁴).

The programs or plans of the higher educational institutions indicated above, among which the programs of Leningrad State University and the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute stand out for their completeness and originality, cannot, within the scope of the present article, be subjected to analysis each separately. It is very important, on their basis,

²) Prospective plan of educational work of the Altai Polytechnic Institute, 1966.

³) Prospective plan of ideological-educational work of the Komsomol organization of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, 1966.

⁴) Prospective plan of ideological-educational work of Kiev State University, 1965.

⁵) Unified prospective plan of ideological-educational work for 1967–1970 of the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute, 1967.

⁶) Unified five-year plan of ideological-educational work with students for 1967–1970 of the Leningrad Mechanical Institute.

⁷) Unified plan of ideological-educational and cultural-mass work of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute for the 1967/68 academic year.

⁸) Program of educational work among students of the full-time division of Leningrad University for the entire period of study at the university, 1967.

⁹) Comprehensive differentiated plan of educational work of the Novosibirsk Institute of Railway Engineers, 1968.

¹⁰) Plan of the main activities of the Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute for 1968.

¹¹) Program for the education of students of the full-time division of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute for the entire period of study at the institute, 1968.

¹²) Prospective plan of political-educational work among students for the entire period of study at Tomsk State University, 1968.

¹³) Recommendations on the organization of educational work among students of the Ural Polytechnic Institute, 1967.

¹⁴) Plan of political-educational, instructional, scientific, and cultural-mass work of the Chelyabinsk Polytechnic Institute for the 1967/68 academic year, 1967.

present a holistic characterization of the state of the problem and reveal the main tendencies that have emerged in the long-term planning of educational work.

First of all, it is necessary to draw attention to the absence of a unified methodological approach to the problem of education as an integral, many-sided social phenomenon. This is already evidenced by the very titles of the documents, which essentially emphasize different scopes of the problem. This is a very vulnerable point in the programs and plans, leading to serious theoretical miscalculations and to shortcomings in the organization of educational work. In most documents the problem is confined to the framework of ideological-political education. This is connected with a narrow understanding of the category of education, with the tendency to see in it only the ideological aspect and to link the functions of education in the higher educational institution chiefly with the departments of the social sciences and with public organizations.

From the standpoint of its origin, education is a superstructural, class phenomenon. But education reflects various forms of social consciousness; it is connected with the most diverse spheres of social life and has a many-sided impact on society and the individual. It is, in essence, as has been pointed out, a broad social category.

In the higher educational institution, purposeful education is dominant, and it is carried out first of all through multifaceted academic activity. It is precisely in the educational process that the structure of the personality, its character and abilities, is most actively formed; that subjective-social culture is transformed into subjective-psychological culture; in a word, that the contradiction between the assigned and the actual state of the student’s personality is resolved.

Secondly, quite often, supposedly in order to increase the effectiveness of ideological-political education, in programs or plans it is considered only within the limits of extracurricular time. The following argument is advanced as a justification: “Academic work,” it is stated in the plan of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, “is carried out on the basis of a clearly developed and scientifically substantiated curriculum, which ensures the training of highly qualified specialists, the formation in students of a Marxist-Leninist worldview, a deep understanding of the tasks of communist construction, a sense of public duty, and Soviet patriotism. At the same time, extracurricular ideological-educational work is conducted, as a rule, without a sufficiently purposeful, predeveloped plan; it is not coor-

“...is planned over time and often lacks consistency in the conduct of events\(^ {15}\).” This provision is also put forward in the plan of the Altai Polytechnic Institute\(^ {16}\).

Such an approach has already received a critical assessment in the literature\(^ {17}\). We would like to draw attention to the following.

First, this formulation is incorrect in substance, since it violates the organic unity of the educational, scientific, and upbringing processes. This unity must be observed by the subject of upbringing at the most varied levels, while upbringing outside class time must, at its core, constitute a continuation of the educational work carried out in the instructional process.

Second, it prevents the organizational unification of all links of the subject of upbringing and their direction toward the joint solution of nodal tasks in the training and upbringing of specialists.

Third, this kind of differentiation of upbringing functions makes it more difficult for student public organizations to understand the leading role of the instructional process in the upbringing of students and the need to promote its successful functioning.

Thus, a narrow approach to the scope and content of the problem, and to its organizational solution, is the most typical and substantial shortcoming of university programs and plans. But this shortcoming leads to another, no less significant one—the absence of a systemic approach in the upbringing of students.

A systemic approach in the upbringing of students is an objective requirement and, consequently, a criterion of scientific validity. It is determined by those functions, or by that subject activity, which a specialist performs after graduating from an institution of higher education. With the systemic or holistic performance of functions, the social activity of the specialist is most fully manifested, and his activity itself takes on the most effective character.

If this proposition is considered as applied to technical institutions of higher education, then the functions of the young specialist are determined by two aspects of production: the organizational-technical and the socio-economic, which define the content of the engineer’s activity in production, his basic functions—technical manager, organizer of production, and educator of the collective.

\(^ {15}\) Prospective plan of ideological-upbringing work of the Komsomol organization of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, pp. 3–4.
\(^ {16}\) Prospective plan of upbringing work of the Altai Polytechnic Institute, p. 1.
\(^ {17}\) L. F. Karamysheva, M. A. Soboleva. “Notes on a prospective plan,” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1968, No. 9, p. 61.

From this point the system of education must include such elements (variables) and the connections among them as would ensure the logic of the specialist’s subject activity in its integral representation. And this is possible, taking into account the contemporary requirements of social and scientific-technological progress, only on the basis of the all-round development of the individual. Hence the system of education must include such elements as would ensure the training of the specialist on the basis of the all-round development of the student’s personality.

Since education in a higher educational institution manifests itself mainly through instructional-subject activity, it is natural that the first and principal element, its core, in the university system of education is the instructional process. But the educational functions of the instructional process are many-sided. Therefore it makes sense to divide this “core” into separate elements or directions, in order to conceive the entire scope of the educational influences of the instructional process.

Unlike the general-education school, higher educational institutions have a designated purpose. The specialization of higher educational institutions reflects the process of the social division of labor, the differentiation of science and of all spheres of social life. Consequently, the system of connections of higher education with the productive forces and production relations, with the entire system of social relations, is not straightforward; it has a complex, specific character.

It follows from this that the system of education in a higher educational institution, proceeding from the general theory of education and its principles, must take into account the special character conditioned by the specialization of one or another higher educational institution, by its purpose, and by the function that the given institution performs in the training of personnel. This imparts great specificity to instructional-subject activity. Unfortunately, in our view, this basic phenomenon in the activity of higher educational institutions and in the system of education has not received any satisfactory and independent solution in programs and plans for the education of students.

Higher education has a professional character (for understandable reasons, the term “professionalization” is rarely applied to higher education). In a higher educational institution the student develops and deepens his understanding of the foundations of the sciences concerning nature, society, and thought. But he does this purposefully and at a high scientific level, with the aid of a whole complex of natural, social, and specialized disciplines, whose role in forming the specialist and developing the personality is rapidly increasing.

Through professional training the objective world is disclosed to the student; it organizes his interaction with the natural and social environment and determines his place in social

division of labor and in the socio-class structure of society. And this is the fundamental, principal connection in the system “society—personality.”

It must not be forgotten that the formation of a positive and, what is very important, creative attitude toward the corresponding profession has an enormous and enduring ideological basis, since this process lies in the channel of the strategic tasks of communist construction.

It would seem that the singling out of professional education as an element of the system of education, one that is the direct consequence of instructional-subject activity, has a sufficiently firm foundation. It follows fully from the important methodological proposition advanced by V. I. Lenin in his work “On a Single Economic Plan.” Lenin demanded that, in education, in the formation of the worldview of a specialist, one take into account his place in the system of sciences and in the social division of labor. “...An engineer,” wrote Lenin, “will come to the recognition of communism not as an underground propagandist or a writer came to it, but through the data of his own science; in his own way the agronomist will come to the recognition of communism, in his own way the forester, and so on.”^18)

In recent years the attention of many sociologists has been directed toward the professional orientation of young people. Moreover, this problem is posed mainly at the level of the secondary school. There is no dispute—this is a problem. But it would be wrong to suppose that it does not exist in higher education. Only a small proportion of applicants enter higher education with a stable orientation toward a given profession. At the same time, specialized disciplines are studied only from the fourth year onward. Sociological studies conducted among senior students of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute^19), as well as data from other higher educational institutions^20), provide full grounds for the conclusion that professional orientation is a major and complex problem for higher education. It must not be forgotten that professional orientation (and professional education contributes to it in many ways) is the main link in social orientation. But since professional education is not singled out, its place in the system of education is not comprehended, and all activity is reduced to separate measures that cannot ensure the solution of an integral task.

^18) V. I. Lenin, Works, vol. 42, p. 346.
^19) Current archive of the Department of Scientific Communism of TPI, minutes of seminar-conferences on problems of student education, 1967.
^20) B. Rubin, Yu. Kolesnikov, The Student through the Eyes of a Sociologist. Rostov University Publishing House, 1968, p. 77.

Sometimes one may hear objections that essentially deny the necessity of professional education. Thus, for example, when the draft educational program of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute was discussed, in some speeches the very posing of the problem of “professional education” was seen as a lack of ideology and as apolitical. It was even concluded that bourgeois sociologists could sign their names to such a program.² As an argument demonstrating the incorrectness of such an approach, one may cite the well-known statement of A. S. Makarenko: “...For the education of a Bolshevik builder and a convinced bourgeois figure,” wrote Makarenko, “one and the same list of methods may be useful throughout, just as brick, concrete, iron, and wood are equally needed for building a church and for building a workers’ club. The question is decided not by the choice of the list, but by the combination of means, by their arrangement in relation to one another, by their general harmonized orientation and, most importantly, by their natural class content.”³ The authors of the above-mentioned program see in professional education the task of fostering interest in and a creative attitude toward one’s specialty, professional honor, and an understanding of the social responsibility of the engineer in socialist society.

There were also objections of another kind. Is it legitimate, within the system of education, to put professional education in first place? Is this not a diminution of ideological-political education, of the worldview aspect in the process of education?

There is much that is superficial and formal in such a formulation. Does the order of elements always determine their significance, their place in the structure? We may put professional education in any place, but then the logic in the interconnection of the elements is lost. Professional education is placed first in the program of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute because it is closest to substantive activity, reflects the purpose of the higher educational institution, its specificity, and its multifaceted connections with the other elements of the system of education, and actively influences them.

The leading element of the system of education is ideological-political education. All the programs analyzed assign it the dominant place. A typical shortcoming consists in the fact that the content of ideological-political education is impoverished; it is torn away from the educational process, from the social sciences, which lay the basic theoretical foundation in this process.

In the educational process, what is formed above all is a scientific worldview. Its distinctive feature is that each science occupies a specific place in its formation. If philosophy, by forming the core of the scientific worldview, creates a system of the most general categories and laws that reflect the most general connections, properties, and relations of the reality surrounding us and of its cognition, then the other social sciences form a person’s awareness of his position in society, of the system of connections between the individual and society, of an aesthetic attitude toward reality, etc. But it would be entirely wrong to diminish the importance of the natural-scientific, general-engineering, and specialized disciplines in educating students in a materialist conception of the world and its regularities. Therefore it is important not only to reveal the role of each department of the social sciences in forming the theoretical foundations of a communist worldview, but also to set before all departments the task of identifying the worldview aspect within their academic disciplines.

It is known that ideological and political education is not limited to the formation of the ideological foundations of a worldview; therefore it is necessary to outline such means as would promote the transformation of ideas into convictions. In this process an organic interconnection can be achieved between academic activity and ideological-educational work outside class time. But this is possible on the condition that extracurricular work is a continuation of the educational process and that public organizations see their main task in fostering in students a conscious and responsible attitude toward their fundamental duties.

The question of moral education has not been fully resolved. In a number of programs, in particular in the program of Leningrad State University, moral education is not singled out separately, but is combined with ideological and political education. This seems to us correct, since the moral aspect organically permeates all means. It would be advisable to reveal moral enlightenment separately.

The question of singling out aesthetic education independently is debatable for the same reason as the singling out of moral education. Aesthetic education should likewise permeate all means.

Physical education, as one of the components of the all-round development of the personality, has its own independent goals and means.

From the standpoint of separate identification, such an element as labor education outside class time is debatable.

Since labor education is a manifestation of students’ social activity, it must be included in ideological and political education. The singling out of labor education as a separate element in the program of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute is explained by the specificity of this sphere of education, as well as by the fact that the voluntary student labor movement has become an important means of increasing the effectiveness of the educational process in the higher educational institution. In addition, under the conditions of Siberia, where there is a negative balance of labor resources, it has great national-economic significance.

Such are the principal system-forming elements that determine the essential characteristics of the system of education. The differentiation of directions is in many respects conditional, since there exists not only interconnection but also interpenetration of the elements. Yet it is necessary, because it reveals the specificity of the directions, their relative independence, and helps to delimit the functions of the subject of education.

In analyzing the content, one should emphasize another important point. The program must be goal-oriented. Of course, first of all it is important to identify the system-forming elements and establish their place in the overall system. But this is not enough. It is also necessary to set the goal that must be achieved in each direction of education and to determine the means by which the goal can be realized. It seems to us that this is an indispensable requirement. And the point is not only that thereby the semantic load of the program is strengthened, opportunities are created for broad thinking, and social responsibility is formed in the subject and object of education. The social character of the program is manifested most of all in goal orientation, and consequently so is the social character of education. It is precisely here that the greatest intersection between pedagogy and sociology occurs.

How, then, is this problem solved?

Many programs or plans are preceded by an introduction in which the goal of education is substantiated. This is done most fully in the plans of the Altai Polytechnic Institute, Kiev State University, and the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute.

The substantiation of goals and means must proceed not only in the general plan, i.e., in the introduction to the program, but also according to the principal directions. This can be shown by the example of ideological and political education, as presented in the program of the Tomsk Polytechnic Insti-

labor⁴. The main goal of the direction consists in the formation of communist consciousness. It is achieved through a system of means. These include:

the formation of a scientific worldview on the basis of the systematic teaching of socio-economic, natural-scientific, and engineering-technical disciplines;

the organization of students’ social practice as a means of transforming knowledge into the basis of practical activity and behavior;

the formation of ethical knowledge.

Further, the goal and the means are detailed through specific tasks and specific means. In the activity common to all years, such tasks are put forward as the formation of the theoretical foundations of a communist worldview, the creation of public opinion about the social significance of the social sciences in forming the class self-consciousness of the engineer, the cultivation of an understanding of the dialectical unity of international and national tasks, etc.

Proceeding from the fact that the resolution of the contradiction between the assigned and the existing state of the student is discrete in character, which is facilitated by the very structure of higher education, the tasks and specific means are differentiated by year. Moreover, the program aims to ensure that such division is taken into account not only in the educational process, but also in all educational work and in extracurricular time. From year to year, public assignments should become more complex, political-educational work should be differentiated, and the student’s ability to think dialectically and to defend principled views scientifically should increase. For example, in the first year, the system of specific means addresses such tasks as cultivating a purposeful interest in and creative attitude toward the study of the history of the CPSU, cultivating patriotism and internationalism on revolutionary and combat traditions, forming the first skills of organizational and propagandistic work and developing students’ social activity, and, finally, legal education.

The system of specific means may be disclosed in such a task as the formation of the first skills of organizational and propagandistic work and the development of social activity among first-year students.

The solution of the indicated task is provided for by holding discussions on the structure and content of the work of the public organizations of the institute, faculty, and specialty, and on the principles of the organization

student self-government, by reading an elective course on the methodology of agitation and propaganda work, and by the gradual inclusion of students in the performance of public assignments. The system of public assignments takes into account the specific features of first-year students. It includes drawing students into participation in elected and voluntary organizations, including the voluntary people’s patrol; involving students in patronage work in secondary schools, children’s homes, and commissions; drawing students into the collection of material on the history of the institute, their participation in the work of the TPI museum, the S. M. Kirov room—whose name the institute bears—and the Room of Military Glory; and the training of student guides for tours of the memorable sites of the city of Tomsk.

Thus a differentiated approach is ensured in the ideological and political education of students from year to year.

It must be noted that a good beginning has been made in the documents being analyzed. In almost all programs and plans, measures are defined according to year of study; attempts have been made to find continuity and, what is very important, to individualize education. Great prospects in this respect are opened by involving students in research work and by instruction according to individual plans.

Naturally, every personality reacts to external influences; but this is especially true of the student, who, very actively, owing to the continuity and intensity of these influences, reflects them in his own structure, improves his character under their influence, and develops his abilities. Thus, in a single personality we have, in combination, both the object and the subject of education. And the task consists in developing the qualities of the personality purposefully and by various means—not only through influences, but also through independent actions and independent participation in multifaceted social reality. Of course, this aspect is represented in all programs, for education itself presupposes self-education. But it seems to us that this problem, like the problem of a differentiated approach and continuity in education, should receive greater attention; they must be studied. In a word, everything comes down to the study of the student’s personality.

Programs and plans must play a major role in this respect. In fact, forecasting educational work is a new phenomenon, and therefore it may be regarded as a social experiment, which obliges one to conduct concrete sociological research systematically. Indicative is the program of Leningrad University, in which the study of personality, soci-

• demographic, psychological, and other characteristics and qualities of students is posed as an important task for the subject of education at all levels.

The study of the personality of the graduate is no less important. During the period of adaptation, the completion of his social orientation takes place, as does his self-affirmation as a specialist and citizen. Studies of graduates, as the embodiment of the feedback principle in managing the process of education, make it possible to improve the system of teaching and educating students.

Sufficient information about each student, depending on year of study, specialty, age, his interests, inclinations, and abilities, is perhaps the most necessary condition for successful management of the process of education. Such information must be possessed by the subject of management at any level. A great deal of thoughtful, painstaking work is needed in order to ensure a qualitative and sufficient flow of information for the effective management of the process of education. Simple research methods should be developed so that they are available in any higher educational institution. There is a need for a unified student card that would reveal, according to the principal parameters, his objective development over all five years and would record the principal milestones of the graduate’s activity.

For effective management of the process of education, differentiation in the program of the subject of management by levels and functions is very important. Unfortunately, this is a very weak point in the documents analyzed. In some of them the subject of management is completely absent (Altai Polytechnic Institute, Kiev Polytechnic Institute), while in others the differentiation is entirely insufficient (Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute, and others).

The most detailed possible division of functions is necessary at all levels of management, covering both the administrative and the public sphere. Of course, the differentiation of duties is to a large extent conditional, but nevertheless it facilitates clarification of the functions of the subject of education, beginning with the leaders of study groups and Komsomol organizers and ending with the governing bodies on the scale of the institute. The study of functional links and dependencies among the subjects of management at various levels constitutes an urgent task.

A substantial problem, for which no unified approach has yet emerged, is the relationship between the program and the plan of education. Here, too, there is evidently no unambiguous understanding of the essence of the program and its purpose.

What, first of all, is our attitude toward the program?

The program is a scientific expression of the content and organizational foundations of the process of education in higher education. It must proceed, first, from the principles of education and the development of the personality, namely: from activity as the basis of educating the personality, from the unity of education and development, from the relation to the personality both as object and as subject of education, from concreteness, differentiation, and continuity in education; secondly, from the objective demands placed by socialist society on the specialist; they are expressed in the ideological conviction of the specialist, endowed with the self-awareness of the working class and conscious of his social responsibility, in profound professional training and in a broad creative approach to social and scientific-technical progress; thirdly, from the requirements of the science of management with respect to self-governing systems and, in particular, from the unity of academic, scientific, and educational work in the higher educational institution, from the principle of feedback; fourthly, from the objective conditions and established practice of education in a particular higher educational institution, from the traditions, means, and methods that have taken shape; and finally, fifthly, from the experience of educational work and of drawing up programs by other higher educational institutions. Thus, the program sets forth the scientific foundations of education.

Therefore we cannot agree with the formulation of this problem in the program of Leningrad University. In the introductory part of the program it is noted that it contains “the methodological foundations of comprehensive long-term planning of educational work among students for the entire period of study at the university”⁵.

With all the growing importance of methodology for the life of higher education, including for the effective management of the process of education, to reduce the program only to this aspect means to lower the value of the present document.

The program provides definite criteria and initial guidelines for drawing up a plan. In it the strategic tasks in education are, as it were, outlined. The plan differs substantially from the program. It is a system of interconnected means, detailed quantitatively, by deadlines, and by executors. The plan must take into account the possibilities of the faculty and the specialty, and must promote the development of the initiative of the subject of management at all levels. It must be concrete. The program cannot meet these requirements, since it is an institution-wide document and possesses less maneuverability than the plan. To transpose, however—

The functions of the plan for the program mean bringing the process of education into the foreseeable future and not losing the opportunity to individualize education.

In addition, it must be borne in mind that a program is, as it were, an ideal model. It proceeds from those criteria that are necessary for the educational process to proceed with maximum effectiveness. But in reality, for a number of reasons, it is not everywhere possible to fulfill all the requirements of the program within a given period of time. It is important to keep in mind also this circumstance: the program must take into account not only what has become the norm in the life of higher educational institutions, but also tendencies that have fundamental significance for solving the general problem. For example, work on individual study plans is, unfortunately, still only a tendency awaiting its development.

Obviously, one cannot put an equals sign between a program and a plan. Very little in common with a program is found, for example, in the “Unified Long-Range Plan of Ideological-Educational Work for 1967–1970” of the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute. In the plan, the essence of the educational process is revealed very sparsely. Instead, a scrupulous detailing of all activities by courses is given, even with the establishment of unified calendar plans and the determination of hours.

The plans of basic activities, comprehensive differentiated plans of educational work, and others, created in a number of higher educational institutions (Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute, Chelyabinsk Polytechnic Institute, Novosibirsk Institute of Railway Transport Engineers), do not meet the requirements of a scientific approach to organizing the educational process. These are, in essence, consolidated plans for the organizational work of all the units of the institute. They introduce a certain coordination into the activity of the various higher-education subsystems, but in no way can they cover all aspects of the educational process.

The cumbersomeness of programs gives rise to objections. It is explained by their excessive detailing. There is a need to create separate methodologies on various questions of education so that, as appendices to the program, they may be used for planning work. There is hardly any need to set out in the program the topics of debates and of thematic Komsomol meetings.

Thus, long-term planning of educational work in higher educational institutions reflects the urgent requirements of the progress of socialist society. Its effectiveness is determined by a number of factors. The initial factor is a scientifically grounded program of education, developed on the basis of unified methodological principles and criteria. Therefore, the elucidation and adoption of general principles and criteria for educational programs is a pressing scientific task.

1. M. A. Vinogradov, “At the Foundation—A Long-Range Plan,” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1968, No. 6, pp. 72–77; L. F. Karamysheva, M. A. Soboleva, “Notes on a Long-Range Plan,” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1968, No. 9, p. 61. ↩

2. Current archive of the Party Committee of TPI, June 1968. ↩

3. A. S. Makarenko, Works, vol. V, pp. 480–481. ↩

4. Program for the Education of Students of the Day Division of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, pp. 17–22. ↩

5. Program of educational work among full-time students of Leningrad University, p. 4. ↩