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Russia’s Ministry of Education wants to introduce a compulsory unified state examination for undergraduates. Students will have to pass before they can be awarded a bachelor degree.
The common exam will provide means of assessing the quality of learning at Russian universities.

Andrei Fursenko, Russia’s minister of education who is set to leave his post shortly, said: “We need an objective tool for assessing the quality of university graduates.”

The new exam is expected to be delivered not only by professors but also by independent experts, including potential graduate employers. It will be used to help assess the level of knowledge of undergraduate students and identify universities that are failing to teach students to the appropriate level.

According to President Vladimir Putin, there are numerous universities in the country that provide students with a very poor education, due to the opening of non-core departments, lack of skilled teaching staff and lack of scientific equipment.

Fursenko said a final scheme for the new exam had not yet been approved and required serious discussion. “There is a possibility that the new exam will take the form of qualification assessment of the students’ knowledge, which will be delivered by the university and the employer,” he said.

According to the minister, some Russian universities, and in particular those that train specialists for the petroleum, nuclear, aviation, IT and restaurant industries, have already started to use independent professional assessment of their students. This could make transition to a unified state exam in their programmes easier.

But the initiative has already provoked sharp criticism from the Russian student community.

Boris Chernyshev, a member of the junior chamber of Moscow City Council and a fourth-year student in the faculty of applied political science at the Russian Higher School of Economics, said it was nonsense to introduce a unified state exam for undergraduates since it would encourage them to pay attention only to the courses they will have to pass, at the expense of others.

“The current format of the unified state examination for secondary school-leavers has already proved itself to be a failure,” he said.

It is planned that the new state exam will first be tested in the Higher School of Economics, which is one of Russia’s most prestigious universities, while its experimental introduction will begin during the next two to three years, before it becomes mandatory by 2018.

According to Moscow News, a Russian business paper, the exam will be taken in special independent testing centres established by Rosobrnadzor. The first such centres are expected to be established in the Irkutsk, Ulyanovsk and Penza regions.

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120308163411394