Direct Production Activity of Young Engineers and Some University Factors Determining It

E. N. Kamyshev

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

Continuous quantitative and qualitative shifts in the content and character of engineering labor, and the breaking down of existing traditional ideas about the goals, essence, and organization of engineering activity, require the educational system constantly to improve its work. Today this perennial problem of higher education is being filled with new content in connection with the rapid pace of scientific and technological progress. To improve higher and secondary specialized education “in accordance with the needs of the development of the economy, science and culture, and the scientific and technological revolution”—this is how the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU formulated the principal task of higher education for the current five-year period¹.

Such a task, being an expression of the internal logic of the development of socialist society, where raising the quality of the specialists being trained becomes a necessary element of social development, in its significance goes beyond the immediate interests of higher education and acquires broad social resonance. It is precisely for this reason that the demand for a theoretical comprehension of the problems of engineering training is heard ever more insistently in the statements of practitioners and organizers of higher technical education, and increasingly takes the form of collective recommendations of Party, scientific, and practical meetings and conferences.

It seems to us that the fullest solution of the problem of engineering training can be achieved through a comprehensive, genetic study of graduates of the institute, combined with an analysis of their activity within the walls of the university itself. Ideally, such a study should proceed, first of all, from an analysis of how an institute graduate performs two functions: the direct production function and the function of political educator and organizer of the working masses².

We find an indication of the need to carry out precisely these functions in engineering activity in Party documents. This is stated already in the decisions of the November Plenum of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) (1929), which indicated that technical cadres in the USSR “must

possess sufficiently profound specialized technical and economic knowledge, a broad socio-political outlook, and the qualities necessary for organizers of the production activity of the broad masses of working people”³). Subsequent decisions concerning the requirements placed on higher technical education reflect changes in the content of these functions, but their necessity remains unchanged⁴).

In the following analysis it is necessary to determine the content and degree of influence of various factors—social, production-related, university-related, and pre-university—on the quality of the functions performed by an engineer in the course of his activity. Clarifying these questions at qualitative and quantitative levels will make it possible to develop significant recommendations for improving higher technical education.

In the present work the range of research tasks is narrower. It attempts to consider the question of the comparative effectiveness of the influence only of specific university factors—the form of instruction, the educational process, students’ public work, students’ research work, and the “third labor semester”—on the quality with which graduates of a technical higher educational institution perform one directly production-related function.

The specific material for the work consisted of data from factory and university documentation, standardized interviews with the immediate supervisors of young engineers, and questionnaires of the engineers surveyed themselves, obtained as a result of a study of the activity of graduates of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute who completed the institute in 1964–1969 and were working at industrial enterprises, in design organizations, and in scientific-research institutions of Western Siberia.

At the same time, the influence of specific university factors on the direct production activity of a university graduate is considered not with respect to the engineer as a whole, but with respect to groups of engineering activity that differ in the content and character of the work. The author has previously had occasion to substantiate the validity of dividing engineers into managers (R), department employees (O), laboratory employees (L), employees of sectoral scientific-research institutes (N), and higher-education teachers (V)⁵). In addition, all the social characteristics used in the present work had earlier been qualitatively interpreted and quantitatively measured⁶), which makes it possible to use the method of correlation analysis as the main means for achieving the stated goal.

Thus, the aim of the present work is, without going into a detailed characterization of each factor, on the basis of the calculated Kendall correlation coefficients, to give a general assessment of the influence of each factor on the direct production activity of young engineers, that is, to determine as a whole their place and role in the general set of directions (ways, reserves) for improving professional engineering training. Such an approach, when the assessment is based on an external criterion, makes it possible more correctly—

³) “VKP(b) in the Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences, and Plenums of the Central Committee,” 6th ed., part 2, 1941, p. 368.

⁴) See: Regulations on Higher Educational Institutions of the USSR. Bulletin of the Ministry of Higher Education and Specialized Secondary Education of the USSR, 1969, no. 5; Materials of the XXIV Congress of the CPSU. Moscow, 1971, p. 206.

⁵) E. N. Kamyshev. The Content of Engineering Labor and the University System of Specialist Training. Proceedings of TPI, vol. 240, Tomsk, 1972.

⁶) E. N. Kamyshev. Some Questions of the Accuracy of Initial Sociological Information. Proceedings of TPI, vol. 256, Tomsk, 1972.

understand the internal logic of the development of each university factor, avoid errors of one-sidedness and absolutization when studying them separately, thereby creating a basis for further research into intra-university activity.

Forms of Study

In our country, higher evening and correspondence education developed greatly after the Great October Socialist Revolution. It underwent its most rapid development in the postwar years, which are characterized by a steady increase in the number of students studying without leaving production. This is very clearly shown by Table 1, taken from the statistical yearbook of the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR, The National Economy of the USSR in 1970, which shows the ratio of the number of students (in thousands) in all forms of study.^7

Table 1

The change in the ratio between evening, correspondence, and daytime forms of study in relative quantities (per every 100 persons studying at a higher educational institution) is shown by Table 2, obtained by calculation.

Table 2

It follows from Table 2 that the rapid growth of education without leaving production continued up to 1966, when the number of evening and correspondence students reached 2,277 thousand, which amounted to 59% of all students in higher educational institutions. For the national economy of the country, such excessive expansion of education without leaving production proved disadvantageous. Therefore, on September 3, 1966, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted the resolution “On Measures to Improve the Training of Specialists and to Improve the Management of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education in the Country,” in which prepar—

^7 The National Economy of the USSR in 1970. Moscow, 1971, p. 637.

...of specialists in the daytime division is regarded as the predominant form of development of higher education as a whole.

However, this does not mean a curtailment of higher education without interruption from production; in the future, too, the most serious attention will be paid to it. The resolution indicates the main directions for improving the training of specialists through evening and correspondence forms of education—raising the quality of instruction and bringing the profile of training into conformity with the content of students’ production activity. Thus the problem is posed not as a quantitative expansion of these forms of education, but above all as an improvement in the quality of training.

In the 1970/71 academic year, 2,340 thousand students were enrolled in the evening and correspondence divisions of higher schools, which is somewhat more than 50% of all students in higher educational institutions. Obviously, such a high proportion of evening and correspondence study should attract the close attention of researchers. However, we have not encountered serious works in the literature concerning these forms of education. In individual articles, the question of the effectiveness of one form or another is being sharply debated.

As in any discussion, the opinions expressed are the most contradictory—from complete rejection of the correspondence and evening forms of study and a transition predominantly to the daytime form³, to the assertion that “in the system of study without interruption from production one can clearly see the prototype of that organization of education which will exist in communist society”⁴.

A way out of this impasse is possible only through serious research work and a profound analysis of all existing forms of education. Only with carefully selected facts at hand, “a foundation of precise and indisputable facts”⁵, can one enter into a dispute with confidence. Otherwise, discussion turns into a game of “examples,” against which V. I. Lenin repeatedly warned.

In assessing the effectiveness of education without interruption from production, we sought to rely on facts of precisely this kind. In our study this is information, taken from documents, about what form of study a graduate of the institute completed. Thus, on the one hand, there is the level of direct production activity of the young engineer, and on the other—his form of study, with or without interruption from production.

The correlation coefficients (K) between the form of study and the index of direct production activity of young engineers make it possible to reveal an interesting picture (Table 3).

Thus, first of all, attention is drawn to the fact that the correlation coefficients in all groups of engineering labor have a minus sign. This means that the relationship is the reverse of what was assumed. We had assumed that graduates of daytime divisions have higher indicators of direct production activity than graduates of evening and correspondence forms of study. The facts we obtained refute this assumption. For the most part, graduates of evening and correspondence forms of study in our sample achieve greater success in production than graduates of the daytime division. To a considerable extent this phenomenon may be explained by specific features

Table 3

Correlation dependence between the labor activity of young engineers and university factors for the entire sample (421 persons)

of the educational process in the evening and correspondence divisions at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, the great attention paid to these forms of instruction by the institute’s administration, and the high qualifications of the professors and instructors who conduct the classes. Of no small importance is also the fact that a considerable portion of the evening and correspondence students at TPI are students who have received thorough general theoretical training in the day division and who, for various reasons, transferred to the evening or correspondence division only in the senior years.

At the same time, the magnitude of the correlation coefficient varies substantially from one group to another. It is most significant in the group of administrative managers ($-0.643$ at $p = 0.16$) and among department employees ($-0.607$ at $p = 0.023$). The form of education has a smaller significance for laboratory and research-institute employees ($-0.321$ at $p = 0.168$; $-0.428$ at $p = 0.113$, respectively). For the group of instructors, it was not possible to calculate the correlation coefficient, since the insignificant number of evening-division graduates in this group provides no basis for such an operation.

Consequently, when considering the problem of the correlation among different forms of instruction, a one-sided approach must not be allowed. Its solution requires a comprehensive assessment both of how the educational process is organized in each higher educational institution and of the specific content of the labor activity of graduates in each group of engineering work. The general rule here, probably, regardless of the specific features of the higher educational institution, will be the proposition that the effectiveness of education without leaving production is higher the closer its graduates work to the sphere of direct material production.

Education without leaving production, therefore, does not permit an unambiguous evaluation. Among its undoubted merits should be included the closer connection of the school with life, the greater maturity and broader life experience of evening and correspondence students in comparison with day students. Experience shows that evening students are effectively included in the process of labor activity, actively participate in the public life of the production collective, and in large numbers are Komsomol organizers and members of Komsomol bureaus, trade-union organizers, members of trade-union committees, people’s controllers, agitators, and propagandists⁶.

These points already indicate the advisability of making preferential use of evening and correspondence education for training engineers in applied specialties for those groups of engineering work that require control, testing, adjustment of equipment, and observation of the course of the production process.

On the other hand, the main shortcoming of education without leaving production is the low quality of study among students in these forms of instruction. An investigation of this question in the higher educational institutions of the city of Tomsk shows that the quality of knowledge of evening students and especially correspondence students is significantly lower than the quality of knowledge of students in day faculties⁷. The low level of knowledge of the greater part of evening students is due mainly to two groups of reasons.

The first group is connected with violation of the principle of uniform requirements in assessing a student’s knowledge, with a lowering of requirements in relation to evening and correspondence students, which occurs among a considerable—

...part of the faculty. This circumstance predisposes the majority of students in advance toward a superficial assimilation of the material and impedes a deep and creative comprehension of knowledge and its application in practical activity. If in the first years of work such superficiality of knowledge, especially in general theoretical disciplines, can to a considerable extent be compensated for by deep knowledge of specific production processes, then over time such a specialist proves unable to take the lead in rapidly developing scientific and technical progress.

The second group of causes follows organically from the specific conditions of education without interruption from production—the heavy employment of students in production, the irregularity in the work of individual enterprises, which forces students of evening faculties to miss classes at the end of the month, overload with public assignments, frequent business trips, and so on.

If in the first case there is a possibility of increasing the effectiveness of evening and correspondence forms of study within the framework of the existing system of education, without changing the existing structure, then the second group of causes can be eliminated only in the process of bringing education without interruption from production closer to the full-time form of study. At the same time, it is important to preserve to the maximum degree its specific feature—a closer connection between theoretical education and practical engineering activity. Improving the quality of academic performance in evening and correspondence departments, and combining various forms of study in the training of a specialist, will inevitably also raise the effectiveness of the activity of university graduates in groups of engineering labor more remote from material production.

Further analysis of the influence of university factors on the direct production activity of young engineers will be carried out using only full-time faculties as an example.

Academic Performance at the University

In proving that the differentiation of engineering labor identified in the theoretical analysis exists in real life, we have already become convinced that, independently of the university, there occurs a spontaneous distribution of its graduates among the selected groups. Thus, the group of administrative managers is joined mainly by students with poor academic performance in their specialty, whereas in the group of university instructors the picture is—

Table 4

the reverse is true. The average academic performance score in specialized disciplines in the group of administrative managers is 3.65, as against 4.26 in the group of teachers.

A similar picture, as can be seen from Table 4, is observed for all cycles of disciplines studied at the higher educational institution.

It must be taken into account that such a spontaneous distribution of students makes it difficult to carry out correlation analysis and makes the correlation coefficients less significant than they actually are.

Nevertheless, when the correlation coefficients were calculated, it turned out that the index of the direct production activity of young engineers is most strongly influenced by the following cycles of disciplines, in order of their significance at \(p < 0.25\) (see Table 5).

In the group of administrative managers: concrete-economic disciplines (\(K — 0.607\)), the diploma project (0.428), industrial practice (0.250).

In the group of departmental employees: general-theoretical disciplines (0.536), general-engineering disciplines (0.428), industrial practice (0.357), the diploma project (0.250).

In the group of laboratory employees: industrial practice (0.678), the diploma project (0.536), specialized disciplines (0.250).

In the group of research-institute employees: general-engineering disciplines (0.536), concrete-economic disciplines (0.428), specialized disciplines (0.321), foreign language (0.321), general-theoretical disciplines (0.250).

In the group of teachers at higher educational institutions: social disciplines (0.714), specialized disciplines (0.571), the diploma project (0.428), industrial practice (0.428).

It is therefore clear that, if the training of engineers as a whole is considered, then, in terms of the significance of their influence on the index of direct production activity, the cycles of disciplines are arranged in the following order: industrial practice, the diploma project, specialized disciplines, concrete-economic disciplines, general-engineering disciplines, general-theoretical disciplines, social disciplines, foreign language.

After we have examined the place and role of forms of instruction in the system of engineering training, it is no surprise that the chief merit of evening and correspondence education—a closer connection than in the daytime department between theoretical instruction and practical activity—now appears as the principal reserve of daytime education.

Russian higher education has rich traditions in this area. It is known that even before the Revolution, at the Moscow Higher Technical School, classes in instructional mechanical workshops began to be conducted for the first time in the world, and in close connection with theoretical instruction. Later these traditions developed: in a number of cases, instructional workshops grew into factory-higher-technical schools, while at certain large industrial enterprises both branches and relatively independent educational institutions were opened.

However, in recent times the initiative of higher educational institutions in this direction has been weak. Thus, “if over the last 20–30 years major changes have taken place in theoretical instruction—its scientific level is rising, the content of the disciplines taught is improving in many respects, methods of teaching and the organization of the educational process are being perfected—then both the organization and the content of industrial training remain, as a rule, almost at their former level”⁸.

Table 5

Correlational dependence between the labor activity of young engineers and university factors, by combined form of training (323 persons)

Also noteworthy is the comparatively high significance of the grade for the diploma design project. This fact probably reflects the point of view according to which it is necessary to strengthen students’ independent work and to develop their creative approach to the task.

A similar experiment, begun by Academician A. F. Ioffe, is now being successfully continued by Moscow higher educational institutions—the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology—where they specialize in training researchers, and where the principal path of training is considered to be that of independent scientific-research work. This path, as N. N. Semenov notes, may be called “the path of knowing the general through the particular.” Working creatively on a particular study, the student inevitably comes into contact with the general problems of science, and also assimilates the general methodology of contemporary scientific inquiry. It is very important that the knowledge thus acquired be not passive, but as active as possible.^14

In essence, this path converges with training through industrial practice, since “the student acquires specialization over the course of three years directly in scientific work—not in the higher educational institution itself, but in various base institutions and at enterprises. The institute’s permanent bases are the best branch research institutions, design bureaus, and the like. From the beginning of the third year until the completion of his work in one of these institutions, the student spends all his working time there. Students are supervised by experienced, creative scientists and engineers—employees of these institutions who, concurrently, are instructors at the institute. The work carried out by students here is included in the plan of the base institution and is conducted at a very high level—methodologically and creatively—above all because these bases are excellently equipped; because these are institutions which, in fact, ensure the progress of science and technology.”^15

It is unclear only why such a path should be applicable solely to researchers. In our view, it may prove no less effective for other groups of engineering labor as well. If there is no doubt that for researchers specialized training (after completion of general educational preparation) must be conducted under production conditions, why cannot this be done, for example, for administrative managers?

In an addendum to the draft decree of the Council of People’s Commissars on higher technical educational institutions, V. I. Lenin noted: “Teaching must be conducted on the basis of the practical study of production processes and the organization of production at state enterprises. The work plans of students at these enterprises are established by the higher educational institutions in agreement with the corresponding economic bodies.”^16 The relevance of such an approach remains today as well, and it remains relevant for all the groups of engineering labor identified in the theoretical analysis.

One cannot but be alarmed by the low significance of the correlation coefficients between direct production activity and general-theoretical disciplines. It would seem that what is today given so much attention, and in whose direction, without doubt, much has been done, should at the very least, if not play the decisive role, then appear far more weighty.

^14 N. N. Semenov. The Role of Scientific Research in Higher Education. Organization of Scientific Activity. Moscow, 1968, p. 22.
^15 N. N. Semenov. “To Love Science from Youth.” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1967, No. 11, p. 47.
^16 Cited from the book: V. I. Lenin on Science and Higher Education. Moscow, 1967, p. 134.

The necessity of a thorough general theoretical training for engineering personnel at the present time is beyond doubt. The advantages of such training lie not only in the fact that it is a kind of foundation for students’ successful mastery of the general-engineering and specialized cycles of disciplines at the higher educational institution, but also in the fact that, to a certain extent, it serves as a guarantee of engineers’ future advancement in qualification. The latter becomes especially urgent under the conditions of the rapidly developing scientific and technological revolution. At the same time, however, there is a real danger of concentrating the main forces and efforts on this direction, of forgetting other aspects of improving engineering education, which, as a rule, leads to a certain disappointment in the paths and methods on which hopes had been placed, and to the transformation of this direction into its opposite.

An example of such absolutization, as V. A. Parail notes, is the special emphasis placed on the general theoretical foundation of engineering education in American higher education: “Engineering education was based on the principle according to which, in college, a student should be taught only the fundamentals of science, taught ‘how to think,’ ‘to know why,’ while ‘teaching principles and the technique of application is preferable to application as such,’ and so on. As for instruction in ‘what to think about,’ ‘knowing how,’ and instruction in engineering proper in this field, the higher educational institutions of the United States have in practice shifted this part of the formation of the specialist almost entirely onto the shoulders of the ‘employers,’ or rather, of the young specialists themselves”⁹.

The limited influence of the general theoretical disciplines on the direct production activity of young engineers indicates that such a danger is real for the Soviet higher school as well. At least, the data of our study show that the differentiation of evaluations at the higher educational institution in the area of general theoretical training is accounted for, among other things, by the degree of their applicability in practice.

The observed separation of general theoretical education from the needs of engineering practice makes it possible, if not to justify, then at least to explain the so-called “psychology of the C grade”¹⁰ that has recently spread among students. While we are fighting the C grade in the institute, C students in production activity achieve noticeable success, thereby contributing to its still wider spread. It may be assumed that in different institutes there is a different level of what constitutes a C grade, but the data of our study speak eloquently in favor of the fact that at TPI this level in the area of theoretical disciplines is sufficiently high—sufficient for effective production activity.

The task of higher education, therefore, consists not only in raising students’ academic performance in general theoretical disciplines, but first of all in bringing theoretical instruction closer to the needs of engineering practice, in the optimal preparation of students for future professional activity, above all through a reasonable combination of theoretical and practical instruction.

We would like to comment here on one more fact concerning the influence of students’ academic performance on direct production activity. This is academic performance in the social disciplines.

We have most often been accustomed to evaluating this indicator from the point of view

its influence on the political and civic activity of the engineer, and only through their mediation do we sometimes speak of influence on direct production activity. However, this is not always so. This is eloquently indicated by the magnitude of the correlation coefficient \((K = 0.714 \text{ at } p = 0.007)\) between performance in the social-science disciplines and the quality of work in the group of university instructors.

Consequently, in the teaching of social-science disciplines one must see, among other things, considerable elements of professional training as well.

Against the background of the significant influence of forms of instruction and academic performance on the direct production activity of young engineers, the influence of the remaining university factors is somehow lost. This gives us grounds to consider them together, without going into a detailed characterization of each factor.

Students’ social and research work, the “third work semester”

Analysis of the effect of these factors on the performance by institute graduates of their direct production function, as in the preceding cases, leads to the necessity of combining university training with practical engineering activity. This is understandable. However much we may speak of instilling organizational skills through social work at the university, however much we may speak of developing the skills of a researcher through students’ research work, this will never replace practice in the production collective itself. Just as it is impossible to make students’ social activity at the university close to the conditions of industrial production, so too is it impossible, under university conditions, to place research work at the level characteristic of modern engineering activity.

In this connection it becomes understandable why research work correlates significantly \((p < 0.25)\) only in the groups of administrative managers, department employees, and laboratory employees—that is, precisely in those groups that are closest to material, rather than intellectual, production. It seems to us that this fact can be explained only by the insufficient level of organization of SRWS, which contributes to the development of the qualities of production organizers to a greater extent than of researchers and scientific workers.

True, today there is an emerging tendency toward the convergence of university developments with academic ones, manifested in the formation of a large number of research institutes and laboratories operating at universities. Provided that students’ research work takes place in these research institutes and laboratories, one may expect a greater effect from it.

But this again brings us to the experience of MIPT and MEPhI, about which we have already spoken. Consequently, the solution of this problem also runs up against the question of strengthening the connection of the higher technical school with the sphere of engineering production.

On the other hand, today social work at the university finds a significant outlet in the practice of virgin-land construction detachments.

Having arisen comparatively recently, these detachments, in terms of their mass character, are today in no way inferior to students’ research work. However, their effectiveness, from the point of view of the influence of this movement on the engineer’s future professional activity, in the long term—

... has so far not been concretely assessed in the literature. We boldly measure the effectiveness of the third labor semester by the amount of capital investment mastered, and forget about the main task of the higher educational institution—the education of a highly qualified specialist.

If, however, one assesses the student celina movement from the point of view of its influence on the formation of the future specialist, the figures are by no means conducive to an optimistic mood. Only groups of researchers and university instructors pass painlessly through this movement, although they acquire practically nothing of significance for their future activity in the process. For the other groups, the influence is negative. And while in the groups of employees of departments and research institutes one might disregard this, since the significance levels of the correlation coefficients are 0.452 and 0.274, respectively, in the group of administrative managers the relationship is rather close (\(K=-0.428\) at \(p=0.089\)).

And this is explained not only by the spontaneous character of the movement, although this aggravates the situation. Isolating, in the analysis, from the entire celina movement only participation in organizational student construction detachments gives a somewhat better picture, but the improvement is not as great as one would like (see Table 5).

The summer labor movement itself, having arisen spontaneously, is seeking a way out of the situation that has developed. Such a way out, it would seem, has been found. It lies in the creation of specialized student formations, where labor activity approaches, in its profile, the student’s future profession¹¹. But the consistent logical development of this direction leads us to the already familiar conclusion about combining theoretical instruction with practical, directly engineering activity at industrial enterprises, design bureaus, planning and scientific-research institutes.

1. Materials of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU. Moscow, 1971, p. 206. ↩

2. For more detail on the functions, see: I. F. Nishchii, The Social Functions of the Engineering Intelligentsia in Socialist Society. Izvestiya TPI, vol. 255, Tomsk, 1972. ↩

3. G. Geller, “Prepare by correspondence,” Sotsialisticheskaya industriya, November 2, 1969. ↩

4. G. I. Polukhin, “For a new upsurge in correspondence and evening education,” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1964, No. 5, p. 3. ↩

5. V. I. Lenin, Complete Collected Works, vol. 30, p. 350. ↩

6. P. A. Klevtsov, “Taking into Account the Specifics of the Evening System,” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1971, No. 4, pp. 28–29. ↩

7. A. P. Goryunov, I. F. Livshin, “On the Effectiveness of Training Engineering Personnel,” Izvestiya TPI, vol. 181, Tomsk, 1967, p. 15. ↩

8. A. I. Bogomolov, “Practice—an Organic Part of Specialist Training,” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1968, No. 5, p. 4. ↩

9. V. A. Parail. Engineering and Technical Education in the USA. Moscow, 1969, p. 206. ↩

10. I. V. Sukhanov. “The Psychology of the ‘C Grade.’” Sociological Studies of Educational Work in Higher Education. Gorky, 1969, pp. 78–82. ↩

11. A. A. Sokalskii. “Productive Labor—an Important Factor in the Training of the Future Specialist.” Izvestiya TPI, vol. 220, Tomsk, p. 49. ↩