Problems of Modern Legal Education in the Context of the Higher Education Reform In the Russian Federation: Results and Prospects
The article is devoted to the problems of modern higher education in Russia. Moreover, the author demonstrates the serious shortcomings of the modern system of higher education in the country following the analysis of the obvious for the most part of Russian teachers defects of higher legal education: underfunding of higher education (meaning not only low salary of the greater part of the teaching staff in the country, but also reducing the cost of upgrading the material and technical base of the universities), tremendous growth of teaching load per teacher (first of all the so-called in-class load), a significant reduction in the number of Dissertation Boards responsible for the awarding degrees in law (especially outside the European part of the country), admission to Master's Degree programmes of persons without basic legal education, imperfection and constant updating of educational standards, without changing the content of the educational process, the bureaucratization of education and transition to "effective" contracts reduce the protection of labor rights of the Russian teacher. Applying the sociological research methods the author questions the validity and effectiveness of the basic ideas of the reform of higher education implemented by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation in recent 10-15 years. Because of this "new education" policy, almost 50% of academic staff is going to lose their workplace at Russian universities, and, therefore, after a change of generations it may happen that there will be no one to work there. Modern Russian educational reform aimed at reducing the overall number of budget places in universities (especially the budget places in the sphere of the Humanities), and the State support for vocational education, will lead to a greater technological backwardness of Russia, compared with the world's leading economies in the next 10 years. The global trend in modern education is, on the contrary, the constant increase in the number of people who have received higher education, particularly in the context of the beginning of the era of the digital economy. Only a sharp increase in expenditure on education to 5-6% of GDP in the coming 3-5 years, while adjusting the directions of the higher education reform can prevent inexorably looming collapse of the entire Russian system of higher education.