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Russia's national outskirts (more than one-half of the country's population) were almost totally illiterate.

b) Now, looking at your Russian plan, retell the text in English.

XII. a) Read the article from the newspaper “The Moscow Times” (№4, July 30, 1997), written by Valeria Korchagina, a staff writer. Study the vocabulary first.

Vocabulary:

Students Rush for Higher Education

Entry exams have finished in Russia's higher education institutions and most students have just learned whether they have been accepted into the colleges of their choice.

Colleges are already reporting two major trends in the selection process for this year. First, following the massive decline in applications for higher education in 1992 and 1993 at the height of post-Soviet chaos, the number of prospective students continues to grow. The Education Ministry expects total admissions to top by 3 or 4 percent the record-breaking 700,000 students recorded last year.

And the new trend this year is that students are not just choosing courses that promise an immediate boost to their careers. They are also returning to more academic humanities and science faculties.

"Despite the apparent fear of unemployment, there is in fact a strong demand for qualified specialists in a variety of fields. There is a need for people

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qualified not just in economics and law and languages," said Vitaly Pekis, from the informational and analytical centre of the Education Ministry. "Apart from counting money, we will also need somebody who can produce and research things," he said.

At the prestigious Moscow State University, demand for places remained high in the directly vocational faculties in this year's entrance exams. There were 4.6 applicants per place in the economics faculty and 5.0 in the law faculty, roughly the same as in 1992. For foreign languages, the ratio was 14.0, well up from 6.7 in 1992. In the computing department, the applicants per place ratio was 6.8, up from 1.6 in 1992. But in other less vocational faculties, demand also grew. In psychology, there are 10.3 applicants per place, up from only 4.1 in 1992, in geology the ratio rose to 4.6 from 1.6 and geography to 7.0 from 1.9.

The increasing interest in college education reflects the view that higher education is a meal ticket in the new market economy and the only way to avoid the increasing risk of unemployment.

"Look at all the adds in the newspapers. There are hardly any that do not require a higher education diploma or even more often a very specific qualification," said Ilya Ilyin, the president of the Moscow State University Student Council. He has just completed a degree in paleontology, the study of dinosaurs, and plans to continue to post-graduate study

The rate of application has also rebounded in response to new policies making it easier for people in the provinces to apply.

Universities have revived an old Soviet tradition of sending teams of professors to the provinces to conduct entrance exams, saving youngsters the expense of travelling to the big city.

"There is now a lot more activity in the regions themselves in promoting higher education, to the point that some governors and mayors open branches of major national universities in order to make higher education more accessible," Pekis said.

Some governors open fully-fledged campuses in their regions with links to big universities, others simply make it easier for national colleges to conduct local exams that are accessible to provincial students.

b) Answer the following questions:

1)What is the title of the article?

2)Who is it written by?

3)What newspaper was the article published in, and when?

4)What is the main topic of the article?

4)How many trends in the selection process are registered according to the article?

5)What are those trends?

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6)How many people (except the author herself) are quoted in the article? Give their names.

7)Where do they work?

8)Who said that there is in fact a strong demand for qualified specialists in a variety of fields?

8)What tendency is observed in the demand for places at the prestigious Moscow State University in 1997 compared to 1992?

9)Is it true that very few advertisements in the newspapers require a higher education diploma or even a very specific qualification?

10)How do the Universities help people in the provinces to apply?

11)How do governors and mayors in some regions and cities make higher education more accessible for the youngsters?

12)What conclusion concerning the development of higher education in Russia can we draw from the facts, which are given in this article?

13)Are the prospects of our education optimistic or pessimistic?

14)Did you like the article? Why?

15)Which of the following diagrams (A, B or C) reflects the data about the demand for places at Moscow State University most accurately?

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c) Study an approximate plan for rendering a newspaper article together with several useful expressions.

1.Headline of the article, title of the newspaper, month, year of publication, author of the article.

The headline of the article is...

The title of the newspaper is...

The article is entitled...

The article under the title… was published in…(newspaper) №… on…(date).

The author is…, the correspondent of…

The article is written by…

2.Main topic (idea) of the newspaper article.

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The main idea of the article is…

The article is devoted to the problem of...

The article touches upon...

The article tells the readers about...

The author discusses an important problem of ...

3.Main contents of the article (main idea of each paragraph).

The article emphasises the idea of...

The author believes that...

The article reports that...

The author points out that…

The article informs that…

The author analyses how...

The author examines why...

In examining the problem the author points out…

According to the author...

The author calls attention to the fact that...

4.Conclusions of the author.

The author comes to the conclusion that...

In conclusion the article reads...

In summing up the author...

At the end of the article the author sums up...

Evaluating the situation the conclusion can be drawn that...

5.Your attitude towards the article.

On reading the article we (I) realise the fact that...

In conclusion I can say...

I find the article useful/informative/interesting/up-to-date/disputable…

d) Using the plan and your answers to the questions from XII (b) render the article “Students rush for higher education” in written form.

XIII. a) Read the text about the academy you study at.

The Siberian Automobile and Highway Academy was founded in 1930, but until December 1998 it had the status of an institute. At the time of its foundation the institute had only two departments: Road Construction and Automobiles with the total number of students of 280 people. Later, in August 1931, according to the Higher Education Ministry Order two faculties were established: the Road Construction Faculty with 10 chairs and the Automobile Transport Faculty with 8 chairs. The first rector of the institute was Nikita Gerassimovitch Gladkov.

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During World War II over 60 per cent of the students and many instructors took part in the military actions. The teaching staff and the students of the institute raised enough money to build a battle plane and a tank, and to buy warm clothes for the soldiers.

Nowadays the Siberian Automobile and Highway Academy is a huge educational, scientific-exploratory and manufacturing complex, which trains specialists of various profiles.

Many outstanding professors, doctors of science, honoured scientists of the USSR worked and are working at the academy. For example, Ulyanov N.A., Anokhin A.J., Alexeyeva T.V., Tolmatchev K.Kh., Artemyev K.A. and others. Their works are translated into many languages of the world.

The academy has six faculties: Automobile Transport Faculty, Road Making and Construction Machinery, Civil Engineering Faculty, Highway Engineering Faculty, Economic Engineering Faculty and the Faculty of Extrabudget Education. Over 5000 students study at these faculties.

The academy has now 39 chairs (17 of them train the fifth-year students) and Postgraduate Department. It also has Research Centre, Centre of Arts, Scientific Library, Publishing Department, experimental school 149, Sanatorium, Sport and Recreation Camp, and four hostels. Computing Centre of the Academy has been functioning for about 30 years. It has already survived several generations of computers. Today it operates over 200 computers, 60 of which being connected into local nets. The centre also provides the students and the teaching staff of the academy with an excellent opportunity to work with such a wonderful facility as Internet.

Graduates of the academy are engineers, mechanics, builders, economists, and managers, who work successfully both in Russia and abroad.

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b) Imagine that you are the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the academy. You have just read the advertisement that your colleagues at the Advertisement Department had written (the text above). (a) Please compose a questionnaire of 10 or 15 questions to study the effectiveness of this advertisement. (b) Give this questionnaire together with the text of the advertisement to four or five of you friends or group-mates and ask them to answer the questions in writing. (c) Study the answers and write at home a report of 150-200 words evaluating the effectiveness of the advertisement.

XIV. a) Before reading the following text answer several questions:

1.Is the Academy you study at a state educational institution or a private one?

2.What do you know about private universities and institutes abroad with respect to the quality of education, their reputation, prestige, prospects of their graduates to get a good job?

3.Are the universities of Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford and Yale private or state? Where are they situated?

4.Are there any private universities or institutes in Russia? …in Omsk?

5.What is your personal attitude towards them? How do you estimate the quality of education in those universities and institutes?

6.Are the diplomas of any Russian universities recognized abroad, for example, in the United States of America?

b) Now read the interview with Natalya Nesterova, Academician and Professor, rector of a private university, and check your answers to some of the preceding questions.

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Education as a Way of Life

Every year on September 1 we get into a festive mood as children go back to school, and students to colleges, institutes, and universities after the summer vacations. On this day, many feel an inner tension, wondering whether they have made the right choice. The reason is that the Russian system of education has over the last decade offered numerous and diverse forms of study the contents of which were not always clear

Confronted with a deluge of information, every young person making an intelligent choice of a future career seeks for themselves an educational niche that would help them keep afloat in the stormy sea of information.

More and more young Russians have been going abroad every year to get a higher education. Do they always make the correct decision? Does our system of higher education lag so far behind that of the West?

We put these and some other questions to Academician and Professor Natalya Nesterova, rector of the Natalya Nesterova University, one of the oldest and best known private institutions of higher learning in Russia.

It became known recently that your graduates get diplomas recognized in the United States. Could you elaborate on this?

We have a special accord with an independent U.S. expert organization that determines whether our education meets American requirements. In a few days’ time we expect to receive the first batch of certificates from them to be awarded to this year’s graduates. This will enable our students to find worthy employment abroad if they wish. But the main reason why we agreed to have our study program examined by a U.S. commission of experts is to enhance the prestige of Russia’s system of higher education, seeking its recognition in other countries. We are now negotiating on this issue with some advanced European nations. Thus, we insist that our universities are not necessarily inferior to their overseas counterparts, that education in Russia is one of the best in the world.

As far as I know, your university uses the latest Western instructional methods. To what extent do you rely on the traditions of the Russian school of higher learning?

Ten years ago, when we set out to elaborate the concept of the university, we paid special attention to the «silver age» of Russian education – the early 20th century. That was a time when the A.A. Shanyavsky University, the V.M. Bekhterev Institute, and the Bestuzhev Higher Courses maintained that the chief goal of higher education was to mold well-educated personalities with a wide mental grasp. And so Russian intellectuals strove to overcome the conventionalism and banality of the higher school, which had traditionally aimed at training white-collar workers and functionaries.

Far from rejecting the achievements of Soviet pedagogics, we try to make maximum use of the positive experience of those years. But we do feel that we

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are inheritors of A.A. Shanyavsky’s traditions. That is why our curricula, especially for the first and second years of study, include many disciplines that go to mold the intellectual of today.

What, in your view, is the fundamental difference between state and nonstate higher education, except for tuition fees, of course?

Let me begin by pointing out that it is not entirely correct to divide institutions of higher learning into state and nonstate ones. Many identify private with nonstate educational structures. The nonstate ones are successors to the Soviet-era institutes, on whose facilities they are based. As a rule, they do not differ much from their Soviet parents, except for their signboards. Whereas a private university or institute is established without state participation, and is independent from the state both financially and ideologically. We are free in our choice of lecturers and instructional methods. Opening before us is a vast field for experimentation.

We at the university see education as a lifelong process. Our job is to help the students to acquire knowledge and instill in them a desire for learning more about the world. Only then will our graduates rationally use their occupational skills, to which we pay a lot of attention of course; only then will these skills be useful to them and other people.

In what way is the Natalya Nesterova University different from others?

The difference is fundamental. We offer our students a maximum choice of various possibilities. We are open to positive changes, whoever they may be initiated by – a student, or a postgraduate, or a professor. We try to create and preserve the unique atmosphere of freedom and that legendary spirit of brotherhood universities are supposed to possess. We don’t have entrance examinations. Instead, we have an interview with the entrant during which we determine the level of his or her training and give the person the necessary counseling. Our students can be of any age and from any country. We have also taken care of young people from families in low income brackets, for them we have a special department, where the tuition fees are just $500 a year, or half the amount of university fees.

We also see to it that student select a department that is best for them. It takes just one day for a student who has made a mistake to be transferred to another department. Those who wish can attend two departments. A student who wants to attend some particular course of lectures can do so on an occasional basis. To an extent, our choice of lecturers is influenced by the students. Sometimes, proceeding from their wishes, we invite a professor to deliver an additional course of lectures.

Doesn’t paid education make students slack, when they can choose which lectures to attend, and so on?

Not those who have come to learn. Incidental students normally drop out – they would fail our end-of-term examinations anyway. Besides, our system of

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home assignments, course projects, and tests keeps busy even the late sleepers.

What do you hold to be your educational know-how?

For ten years we have been working over the concept of continual education. Our educational system can take in a two-year-old and keep them until a ripe old age. The university structure includes a kindergarten, a primary school, several types of secondary schools, a study center for decorative and applied arts, a Ladies’ Institute, a school of foreign languages, and a further education center.

Could I ask you a traditional question now? What is your vision of education in the third millennium?

It seems to me that humanity will very soon start making great strides in spiritual advancement. Spiritual development will inevitably carry education forward, putting it on a more individual, personal footing.

Today’s fast-developing long-distance instruction and the tremendous possibilities of the Internet are bound to revolutionize the system of education as we know it today, providing substantially greater opportunities for those thirsting for knowledge.

Interviewed by K. Paramonov

c) Using the plan given in XII (c), render the contents of the interview with Natalya Nesterova in the written form.

XV. Give possibly exhaustive description of the system of higher education in Russia.

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