THE UNIVERSITY AND COMPETITIVE SELECTION OF APPLICANTS

L. I. KISELEV

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

The most important task of higher education at the present stage is to improve the quality of personnel training. The resolutions of the XXIII Congress of the CPSU state: “Soviet specialists must be armed with Marxist-Leninist theory, possess knowledge at the level of the latest achievements of science and technology, have the necessary economic training, and be able to solve, in a qualified manner, the problems of scientific and technological progress, of the scientific organization of labor, and of production management”¹. For this it is necessary to place the entire process of instruction and upbringing on a scientific basis. A component stage of this work is the improvement of the competitive selection of applicants, since only through competition can the most capable and best-prepared young people be admitted into the ranks of students. Meanwhile, many higher educational institutions, when forming a new intake, not infrequently encounter difficulties caused precisely by the absence of real competition (after the entrance examinations). Therefore, questions of admission and its optimization have recently become the object of practical searches and theoretical studies².

The subject of the present article is, in this respect, an examination of the activity of a number of technical higher educational institutions of Western Siberia. Their experience is of definite interest, but it has not received generalized treatment in the literature.

A real picture of the state of competitive selection can be formed on the basis of an analysis of entrance examinations over a number of years

Table 1

Results of entrance examinations at the Altai Polytechnic, Tomsk Polytechnic, and Tomsk Civil Engineering Institutes, and at the Omsk Institute of Railway Engineers
(for 1964–1967)

for certain institutions of higher education in Western Siberia (see Table 1)³).

It follows from the table that, because of weak preparation in school, a considerable portion of applicants is eliminated as a result of the entrance examinations⁴).

However, such an overly general characteristic does not give us a complete picture of the examination results. Let us compare the results for different faculties, reflecting new and traditional directions of scientific and technological progress (see Table 2)⁵).

It is evident from the table that, if the first two faculties as a whole receive a prepared replenishment, the same cannot be said of the mechanical and heat-power engineering faculties.

Other institutions of higher education encounter similar difficulties in filling admissions for traditional specialties.

Thus, several years ago the rectorate of the Kuzbass Polytechnic Institute reported with alarm to the CPSU regional committee: “As a rule, there is no annual competition for the mining faculty; moreover, the mining faculty is staffed by random applicants who did not pass the competition for other faculties of the institution or even for other institutions of higher education in Siberia (Tomsk, Novosibirsk). For the overwhelming majority of such applicants, the mining faculty is only a step by which they relatively easily get inside the walls of the institution. During their studies such students seek all possible means of transferring to other specialties or to other institutions of higher education”⁶).

It must be borne in mind that the choice of a profession is a complex social problem, the solution of which depends on a number of conditions of an economic and social nature. These include, first of all, the level of development of the productive forces and the division of labor based on it, and the forms of ownership of the means of production.

Social factors also exert a significant influence: class structure, the character of national relations, etc.⁷).

These objective conditions also determine society’s needs for one profession or another, which, through the system of vocational-technical, secondary specialized, and higher education, become the life plans of young people. The choice of a profession takes place on the basis of the individual characteristics of the student, under the influence of mass communication media (the periodical press, radio, television, etc.), personal influences (parents, schoolteachers, friends), and others.

However, vocational guidance often has a one-sided character, when among young people interests are awakened

³) The table was compiled on the basis of materials from the archive of TISI, fond 3, file 51, fol. 10; file 57, vol. 9; reports on the work of the TISI admissions commission for the 1966–1967 intakes; the archive of OMRIT, fond 1, file 455, fol. 26; file 480, fol. 31; file 530, fol. 21; file 560, fol. 6; the current archive of the TPI admissions commission, reports on the work of the TPI admissions commission for admitting students to the first year of daytime faculties for 1964–1967; the current archive of the API academic section, statistical reports for 1964–1967, form 3-NK.

⁴) Other researchers also arrive at analogous conclusions. See, for example: M. N. Rutkevich, Social Needs, the Education System, and the Life Plans of Youth, “Life Plans of Youth,” Sverdlovsk, 1966.

⁵) The table was compiled on the basis of materials from the current archive of the TPI admissions commission, reports on the work of the TPI admissions commission for admitting students to the first year of daytime faculties for 1964–1967.

⁶) PAKO, fond 126, opis 15, file 79, fol. 100.

⁷) L. A. Margolin, “Freedom of Choice of Profession as a Condition and Form of the Manifestation of Personal Freedom,” Philosophical Sciences, p. 35, No. 2, 1968.

Tomsk Polytechnic Institute

Table 2

mainly toward new, popular specialties. Hence the large competitions in the entrance examinations at some faculties and their absence at others, and the partial replenishment of the student body by school graduates with professional inclinations that do not correspond to the profile of the higher educational institution. Meanwhile, a person’s correct choice of profession is not only his personal affair, but also a concern of society as a whole. This proposition follows from the very principle of socialism: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his labor.

Thus, the empirical material cited above shows that the reasons for the absence of real competition for many specialties are rooted to a great extent in the weak work of the general-education school and in the one-sided value orientation of young people.

Therefore the activity of higher educational institutions in improving enrollment should help eliminate these negative phenomena. This work is headed by institute-wide admissions committees, which, in essence, have become permanently operating bodies.

In the pre-examination period, the committees devote their main attention to two tasks: conducting agitation and explanatory work among young people and creating a network of preparatory courses for admission to institutes.

The first is accomplished in the following way.

First, higher educational institutions publish special issues of a large-circulation newspaper devoted to admissions questions, announcement posters on enrollment for the first year with basic information about the institute, the procedure for admission, and other agitation material, which is then sent in advertising order to cities, secondary schools, industrial enterprises, construction sites, and other organizations and institutions. True, some educational institutions carry this out mainly on the scale of only their own oblast, while others considerably expand the geographic boundaries. Thus, the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute conducts this work in many cities of Siberia, Kazakhstan, the Far East, and Central Asia.⁸

Second, the development of professional interests takes place through patronage assistance to secondary schools and personal contacts of teachers with future applicants. Faculties organize various technical circles and rooms in the schools under their patronage, equipping them with the necessary instruments and equipment. Their representatives often give lectures on the institute’s specialties, its history, traditions, and so forth.

Similar agitation and explanatory work is carried out by scholars during their official trips to various enterprises, special trips in May–June of each year to other cities to organize the new enrollment.

The same purpose is served by the annually held open-door days of the institutes.

The Komsomol organization of the higher educational institution provides great assistance. At the request of the Komsomol Central Committee, Komsomol students write letters, and during vacations hold discussions in the schools they graduated from or at enterprises and construction sites where they worked, on matters of professional orientation.⁹

⁸ Current archive of the admissions committee of TPI; report on the work of the admissions committee for the admission of students to the first year of day faculties for 1970.

⁹ TsAKO, f. 126, op. 15, d. 29, l. 107; Archive of OMIIT, op. 1, d. 481, ll. 2; d. 591, ll. 2, 3; Archive of OMPI, op. 1, d. 224, ll. 1, 2; Archive of TISI, op. 3, d. 50, l. 2, d. 57, l. 20.

The measures adopted made it possible to somewhat more quickly bring applicants’ life plans into line with the objective needs of society, as expressed through the education system, although an optimal ratio can hardly be achieved here.

Another important task of admissions committees is to prepare young people for entry into an institute. To this end, courses with differentiated periods of study—from 9 to 1 month—are created in various cities; in these courses, classes are held in the subjects included in the entrance-examination program. The courses are staffed by experienced teachers from among secondary-school teachers and employees of higher educational institutions and technical schools.

The organizing institutes provide them with methodological assistance, sending curricula, training programs for individual disciplines, variants of test papers, and other literature, and they monitor the quality of the educational process.

Taking into account that, because of work in production, some young people cannot attend classes during the daytime, evening, two-shift, and correspondence preparatory courses are being created.^10)

These measures make it possible not only to select the most worthy candidates for higher educational institutions; they also increase the social mobility of society. It is known that young men and women from rural areas have fewer opportunities to obtain higher education than city dwellers, because of differences in their parents’ education, the level of teaching, the location of cultural institutions, and so forth. Representatives of various social strata of the city are likewise in unequal positions in this respect.

Through the system of courses of various forms of instruction, and through preparatory departments, higher educational institutions help to overcome this inequality: they help young people correctly determine their professional aptitudes and prepare for admission to institutes. In this regard, a special role is assigned to preparatory departments, the creation of which began in 1969. As initial experience already shows, their students successfully eliminate gaps in their knowledge and continue their studies in higher school.^11)

The measures taken by higher educational institutions have enabled many of them in recent years to obtain a better-prepared replenishment of students. Of course, comparing admissions results is a difficult matter, fraught with the danger of errors because of differing levels of requirements; however, on the basis of the Tomsk technical institutes it is possible to draw certain conclusions. There, beginning in 1967, on the initiative of the inter-institutional council, unified texts of examination questions in mathematics (oral and written), physics, and chemistry, as well as essay topics in literature, were developed for all technical higher educational institutions. A unified schedule for their use was drawn up, according to which all applicants on the same day wrote an essay or solved a written problem in mathematics of identical content.^12) The results of the examinations are shown in Table 3.

Thus, despite individual declines, there is a tendency for applicants’ knowledge to improve. However, in the work on the comprehensive—

^10) Archive of OMPI, fond 1, file 224, l. 2, 3, 16; file 337, l. 124, 135; Archive of TISI, fond 3, file 50, ll. 3, 4; file 57, ll. 3, 4. Current archive of the admissions committee of TPI. Reports on the work of the admissions committee of TPI for admission of students to the first-year day faculties for 1964–1970.

^11) Current archive of the preparatory department of TSU, report on the work of the preparatory department at TSU for the 1969–1970 academic year.

^12) Archive of TISI. Report on the work of the Tomsk Civil Engineering Institute for the admission of students to the first year in 1968. L. 3.

Table 3

Results of entrance examinations (% of excellent and good marks)
in specialized subjects^13)

...of the new intake there are also shortcomings; unresolved problems continue, for example, to remain, including a high turnover of course listeners^14). This is explained, in our view, by several reasons.

First, because of the absence of a full-fledged set of living conditions in the eastern regions of the country, there occurs a partial self-resolution of the contradiction in the form of migration of the population and of qualified personnel, which often forces industrial enterprises to use technicians in engineering positions^15).

Second, the continuous growth in the well-being of working people and the preservation of a significant number of jobs that do not require profound specialized knowledge give rise, among part of the youth, to limited value orientations toward obtaining higher education.

Third, there is insufficient organizational, agitational, and explanatory work at the workplace by the administration and by Party and public organizations.

The solution, evidently, should be sought both in changing objective conditions—that is, in overcoming the socio-economic and cultural-everyday differences between Siberia and the central regions of the country—and in increasing attention to questions of the upbringing of youth.

Enterprises do not make full use of the opportunities given to them for sending scholarship students to study. Such applicants, in comparison with other categories of those entering, show weaker knowledge; many are screened out during

^13) The table was compiled on the basis of materials from the current archive of the TPI admissions commission; reports of the TPI admissions commission on the organization of the new intake for 1968–1970; the TISI archive; reports of the TISI admissions commission for 1968–1970; the current archive of the academic division of TIRÉ&E; reports of the TIRÉ&E admissions commission for 1968–1970.

^14) Current archive of the TPI admissions commission; reports on the work of the admissions commission in organizing the new intake for the first year of full-time faculties for 1964–1970. TISI Archive, inv. 3, file 50, fol. 8. Reports on the work of TISI in recruiting students for the first year for 1968–1970.

^15) PAAK, fond 1846, inv. 1, file 185, fol. 35; file 194, fols. 32, 33.

entrance examinations^16). Some organizations propose slightly changing the conditions of admission and sending for study persons who have not two years but one year of practical work^17). This proposal, in our view, deserves attention. In that case the interruption in study is shortened and, consequently, the level of preparation rises.

Thus, the active recruitment by higher education institutions of their own replenishment helps young people obtain specialties in accordance with their individual abilities, contributing to the successful solution of the tasks of communist construction.

^16) Current archive of the admissions commission of TISI, reports on the work of the admissions commission in organizing the new intake for 1966–1970; TISI archive, reports on the work of the TISI admissions commissions for 1966–1970.

^17) Current archive of the admissions commission of TPI, report on the work of the TPI admissions commission for 1967, sheet 8.

1. Materials of the XXIII Congress of the CPSU, p. 194, Moscow, 1966. ↩

2. See: M. N. Rutkevich, Social needs, the education system, and the life plans of young people, “Life Plans of Young People,” Sverdlovsk, 1966; S. I. Raduchan, Actively recruit the new replenishment, “Vestnik vysshei shkoly,” 1968, No. 5; L. I. Ibragimov, Strive for precision and organization, “Vestnik vysshei shkoly,” 1968, No. 4; G. A. Nikolaev, Competitive selection—on a scientific basis, “Vestnik vysshei shkoly,” 1967, No. 5, and others. ↩