The Content and Specifics of Research and Teaching Work in Higher Education

B. A. Rybin

Scientific and technological progress and higher education are very closely interconnected. As one of the main tasks facing higher education, the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU set forth the following: “To develop higher and secondary education in accordance with the requirements of scientific and technological progress, to improve the quality of training and to enhance the ideological and political education of future specialists”¹.

Improving the quality of specialist training depends on the conditions under which it is carried out. These conditions are determined by the three constituent elements of the labor process, substantiated by K. Marx with respect to the sphere of material production and which, with a certain degree of conventionality, may be transferred to the sphere of higher education. Labor itself here should be understood as the activity of research-and-teaching personnel and educational-support staff who provide instruction. The means of labor are the material and technical base of higher education, and the distinctive object of labor is the students.

Among the three components, the decisive importance in improving the quality of specialist training and enhancing their ideological and political education belongs to the qualifications of the research-and-teaching personnel. “In every school,” wrote V. I. Lenin, “the most important thing is the ideological and political orientation of the lectures. What determines this orientation? Wholly and exclusively the composition of the lecturers... No control, no programs, etc., are at all capable of changing the orientation of studies that is determined by the composition of the lecturers”².

The activity of research-and-teaching personnel in higher education consists of two components: scholarly labor and pedagogical labor. If this is so, then how do these two kinds of labor relate within the framework of the combination “research-and-teaching labor”; what lies at the basis of this combination? In other words, is this combination held together by the unity of the functional content of scholarly labor and pedagogical labor, or is it maintained by a force lying outside the content of these two kinds of labor?

To clarify this question, let us consider the functional content of both parts of the labor of research-and-teaching personnel as isolated from one another, i.e., in “pure form,” especially since at the present—

at the present stage of the division of labor in society they exist separately, as scientific labor and pedagogical labor.

Scientific labor, in the broadest sense, is a process of interaction between man and nature and, like any kind of activity, includes three simple elements of labor: the purposeful activity of man, the object of labor, and the means of labor. The conscious, purposeful activity of people in the sphere of science is directed toward the cognition of the phenomena and laws of nature for its subsequent practical transformation. The object of labor is nature, society, and thought. The means of labor appear in the form, first, of distinctive spiritual instruments of production, i.e., methods and techniques of cognition, and, second, of the material technology of science, i.e., the instruments of scientific experiments.

The specificity determined by the peculiarities of the simple elements of scientific labor does not preclude its having common foundations with other types of human activity. The labor of the scientist is directed not only toward the cognition of the regularities of nature and society. Like the labor, for example, of a worker in material production, it is directed toward the transformation of nature and society through the use in practice of the new knowledge that has been obtained. The entire difference between them consists only in the fact that labor in the sphere of material production is directed toward the direct transformation of nature, whereas scientific labor transforms this nature indirectly: through the development and improvement of the personal and material factors of production.

It follows from this that scientific labor acts as the initial stage of the process of social reproduction and constitutes activity directed toward the discovery and cognition of new regularities and phenomena in nature and society and their further use in practice.

Here scientific labor is taken in the broad sense of the word, including fundamental or theoretical research, applied research, and experimental-design developments, which represent different stages of the cycle “research—production.” Although there are certain differences among these stages, their unification within the framework of scientific labor is legitimate, since they are activities creative in their character. Here it is necessary to note that what is at issue is the creative character of the labor itself, and not a creative attitude toward labor. There is a distinction between these two concepts.

A creative attitude toward labor is possible in any kind of human activity, including scientific and pedagogical activity, and it is characterized by initiative and by a personal attitude of the individual toward his labor duties. Only in this sense does the frequently encountered assertion that all labor under socialism has a creative character have a right to exist. It would be more correct to speak of a creative, i.e., conscious, attitude toward labor, of an interest in labor, of the striving to improve it within known frameworks and norms. In other words, a creative attitude toward labor lies on the side of the person as an individual.

It is otherwise with the creative character of scientific labor. Scientific labor, being based, like all labor, on the experience and knowledge of predecessors and contemporaries, is from this point of view, as K. Marx indicates, “universal labor.” “All scientific labor, every scientific discovery, every invention is universal labor. It is conditioned partly by the cooperation of contemporaries, partly by the utilization of the labor of predecessors.”³

However, scientific labor is connected not so much with the experience of predecessors and contemporaries, with the use of already known variants for solving a problem, as with the search for new methods of solving a new task, in the course of whose solution the scientific worker switches to resolving another one. The assumed repetition of known operations and the use of the experience of predecessors and contemporaries act only as the initial moment for obtaining new knowledge. This, most likely, is the creative attitude toward labor.

The creative character of labor begins beyond the limits of known experience, for all available knowledge and modes of action are insufficient, although they are necessary for the achievement of a new goal, for the satisfaction of a new need. Therefore people, having become aware of the task before them, are compelled to develop a new mode of action, new techniques and methods that until then had remained outside people’s field of vision, with the help of which the goal they have set is achieved. All this gives scientific labor its creative character. The expression “the torments of creativity” applies, rather and above all, to this aspect of scientific labor, rather than to the use of various known variants, experience, and knowledge of predecessors and contemporaries, i.e., to the creative attitude toward labor.

The creative character of labor gives scientific labor such a specific feature as the uniqueness, the unrepeatability of scientific research and of its result. Whereas in any activity the repeatability of the labor process and of its result is a necessary condition of its existence, in scientific research their uniqueness is a sign of the functioning of labor as scientific. This, of course, does not mean that repetitions are absent in scientific investigations. They occur when there is a need for rigorous verification of the results obtained, or when the costs of obtaining the information about a scientific investigation needed by a scholar are higher than the costs of repeating it. The uniqueness and unrepeatability of scientific investigations find concrete expression in the impossibility of determining in advance, with a sufficient degree of precision, the specific expenditures of scientific labor and the expenditure of time required to obtain a result. In other words, scientific labor, from the standpoint of the expected result, has a probabilistic character.

Thus, the creative character is determined by the goal-directedness of the process of scientific labor, which presupposes the new as an obligatory result. The creative character is an objective phenomenon, lying on the side of labor itself, and does not depend on the dominant social relations within the framework of which it proceeds.

By contrast, the creative attitude toward labor lies on the side of the worker, of the individual, and is under the influence of social relations, including economic relations.

The process of instruction, considered in the broadest sense, is a process of interaction between two active counterparts: the instructor and the learner, the teacher and the pupil, directed toward the instruction of the latter. Since what is being characterized here is pedagogical labor, and not the process of instruction as a whole, the latter is considered only from the teacher’s point of view, while the second counterpart—the learner—is only presupposed. The process of instruction from this side, like any labor process, also includes three moments. The purposeful activity of the teacher is directed toward transmitting to learners the knowledge accumulated and systematized by science and practice and toward developing in them the corresponding skills and abilities. The object of the teacher’s labor is the consciousness of the learners, upon which he acts with the help of distinctive means of labor. The latter consist: first, of the spiritual instruments of labor, i.e., methods and techniques of cognition, the knowledge itself, and methods and techniques for transmitting knowledge; and, second, of material-technical—

means of instruction; and for higher education these also include the material instruments of scientific research.

Common to the component elements of the process of scientific and pedagogical labor are: methods and techniques of cognition, knowledge itself, and the material instruments of scientific research, i.e., a significant part of the means of labor. This commonality to a certain extent facilitates the realization of the unity of scientific and pedagogical labor within higher education.

At the same time, the processes of scientific and pedagogical labor differ in their component aspects. First, they differ in their target functions: scientific activity is directed toward the search for new, unknown knowledge, while pedagogical activity is directed toward the transmission of already known, accumulated, and systematized knowledge, toward the formation of skills and abilities in learners. Second, the object of scientific labor is nature, society, and thought; the object of pedagogical labor is the consciousness of learners, the assimilation of the knowledge being transmitted, the formation of skills and abilities, and, on this basis, the development of learners’ capacities and intellect.

Moreover, the activity of scientific-pedagogical workers takes place within a known, limited time, which leaves its mark on the degree of mutual separation of the two components of the labor of these workers.

Thus, although the processes of scientific and pedagogical labor, in their component aspects, do have a certain commonality, it is insufficient for the joint functioning of scientific and pedagogical activity in the form of close unity in each individual labor force of this type. For such functioning, there is also needed a force external in relation to the content of scientific and pedagogical labor, one that would firmly unite the two types of activity in the individual labor force.

Such an external force is the social—including economic—need for labor power of this type.

For the implementation in practice of the achievements of scientific-technical and social progress, on the one hand, and, on the other, for its further development, as indicated in the resolutions of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU, an increase in the number and an improvement in the quality of specialists graduated by higher education are required. Along with this, the need is also growing for highly qualified scientific-pedagogical personnel who would organically combine scientific and pedagogical activity.

Meanwhile, although the number of the most highly qualified teachers—those holding academic degrees and titles—has grown in recent years, their proportion among the teaching staff has not increased but decreased. For example, in the higher educational institutions of the RSFSR the total number of the professorial-teaching staff in the period 1958–1968 rose from 71 thousand to 127.8 thousand persons, or by 80%, while the number of Doctors of Sciences increased by only 29% and Candidates of Sciences by 44%. The proportion of scientific-pedagogical workers holding academic degrees fell from 43% in 1959 to 35.3% in 1967. In 1967 only 4.1% of teachers held the academic title of professor, and 25% that of docent. Of the 11.7 thousand heads of departments, 3,467 persons, or 29.5%, held the title of professor, 5,984 persons (51%) that of docent, while the rest had neither academic titles nor the academic degrees of Doctor or Candidate of Sciences. Among senior lecturers, who make up about 35% of the entire professorial-teaching personnel of higher educational institutions, only 9.8% have the academic degree of Candidate of Sciences.^4

^4 V. G. Komarov, Economic Problems of the Training and Utilization of Personnel Specialists. Moscow, 1972, pp. 96–97.

Thus, the negative trend in the quantitative provision of higher education with highly qualified personnel, which occurred in the past decade, has not been overcome at the present time either, due to the growth in the number of higher educational institutions, which testifies to the growth of society’s needs for this category of workers.

Social practice knows several channels through which it is possible to regulate the satisfaction of the need for highly qualified scientific and pedagogical personnel. Among them one may single out such channels as the measure of labor and the measure of consumption.

1. Materials of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, Politizdat, 1971, p. 277. ↩

2. V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, vol. 47, p. 194. ↩

3. K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, part I, p. 116. ↩