21 January 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting of the Council for science and education, which discussed the issues of preparation and implementation of the strategy for scientific and technological development of the country. At the beginning of the meeting, the President made a report, much of which was devoted to the progress in the reform of Russian science. Here Vladimir Putin has led a number of optimistic data that seemingly confirm the correctness of the direction provided by the Russian science reformers. But try to evaluate them critically from the point of view of statistics and objective facts.
Giving an overall assessment of the development of science in the country, the President expressed confidence that in recent years, “created a strong Foundation for carrying out large scale research projects, strengthening the infrastructure of science, its personnel potential.” Indeed, since 2005 there has been some revival of innovative activity of scientific organizations: in the conditions of favourable economic conditions, the volume of expenditure on technological innovation increased in 2014 by 8.5 times. However, this has not meant that Russia became a player in the global market the latest technologies, as it was planned by the government: for example, the volume of foreign investments among the costs of innovation in 2014 amounted to a paltry 0.3 percent. In this case since the adoption in 2011 of the Strategy of innovative development of the number of enterprises introducing innovations, consistently declined until 2014, fell during the period and the number of patents.
Despite the fact that, according to Putin, “we have a lot of good examples of cooperation of science and business”, the proportion of organizations engaged in innovation activity in Russia for 10 years has not changed and does not exceed 10%. From them the actual business, i.e., private organizations only 9.7%. The share of organizations in the innovation spending has fallen from 80% (2005) to 51% (2014). Thus, special steps in moving the private sector towards innovation is not observed.
Fewer engineering organizations engaged in scientific and technological activities directly in production. The main reason is low demand for the results from the half-dead real sector of the economy.
Rapid “aging” of Russian science was one of the main problems in the post-Soviet period. According to the President, there has been a change: “a significant number of young scientists, especially in organizations that are engaged in applied and focused on a specific task fundamental research”. Indeed, overall, the average age of researchers decreased from 48 to 46 years old. However, this process is not so clear: the ageing of the highly qualified scientists continues. The explanation is simple: old people died, the total number of scholars fell, that’s how young people and increased. It is the salary in 12 thousand roubles?
The average age of researchers with PhD in 2014 was 63 years, although in 2000 he was 60 years old. The average age of academicians is a completely senile 75 years, which can not affect the General intellectual level of the RAS. For the period from 2000 to 2013 in the system of hoakalei significantly reduced the number of candidates of science — at 2294 (6,6%), which negatively influenced the age structure of researchers in the academic sector of science. The share of researchers in the public academies of Sciences at the age of 70 years and older increased from 4.6% in 2000 to 14.3% in 2013 Thus, the rejuvenation of the staff in science is not nearly so rosy.
It should be remembered that in scientific organizations continue to reduce staff. In 2014, the number of employees engaged in research and development amounted to 732 274 people. It 37,7% compared to 1990 (1 432 943 persons) and 82.5% by 2000 (887 729 people), in 2013 there was a reduction of staff of 1.7 million people. Dismissal of people due to the government policy of optimization of States in a network of scientific organizations. However, in countries on which Russia seems to be equal in their scientific and technological development, on the contrary the number of researchers increasing from year to year: compared with 2012 the number of scientists in Japan increased by 14.4 thousand people, during the same period in Germany employed 12.6 per thousand researchers, a growing number of scientists in Italy, Britain, Turkey and the vast majority of OECD countries. In these countries actively created new jobs in the research field, whereas the personnel potential of Russian science is declining.
The President noted that “the growing ability of domestic higher education are celebrating and foreign experts. Several dozen of our universities is included in various international rankings. In 2015 three Russian University made it into the top hundred of the best in the world in “physical science””. The ratings in the sphere of science and education do exist different, for example, according to one of the most prestigious and authoritative Academic ranking of world universities, in 2015, only MSU entered the top 100 universities in the world, finishing in 86th position, while in 2014, he was 84. St. Petersburg state University in this ranking is 301-400 lines. In the QS World University MSU is ranked in the 2015 line 114. From these data, it is difficult to speak about any significant growth of potential of domestic education and even its prestige. Rather, it is apparent to those skilled degradation.
According to V. Putin “the 150-strong state research institutes, centres, universities… make a significant contribution to world and national science.” About notable contribution to world science at the same meeting, the Council voted President of the RAS Vladimir Fortov: “the growth of our publications for 15 years was only 12 per cent against a ten-fold growth in China and threefold in India. While the number of articles China has overtaken the us in 1997, India in 2005, Brazil in 2007; we had already on my back about Iran”.
The President also mentioned how the achievement of the Association of state academies. Recall that a crossed as mix Moscow agricultural, Medical and diversified classical Academy. What is the effect? He did not know the President? The effect is simple. Of FORTS: a moratorium on the property ended and already lined up willing to rasterbate of the building and the results of the Academy. And serves for achieving the increase in wages from 35 thousand to 45 thousand rubles due to reduction of research staff by a third (from Pushchino, Russia). It is actually calling a spade a spade — the pogrom of science and the Academy. Especially considering that funding, and without that appallingly low compared with other countries, even decreasing.
In his speech at the meeting of the Council is academician V. Fortov did not opt for particular and once again criticized the basic approach of the reform to the allocation of “effective” organizations: “masters and slaves… is in basic science is difficult to apply in principle, though, because the selection criteria are purely formal and very bureaucratic in nature and does not reflect the nature of scientific creativity”. If you talk about the share of Russia among the world’s patent applications, here our country was not even in the top ten (2014), behind Sweden and Switzerland. On the background of the China in 10 years a 10 fold increase in the number of patents in Russia no actually nothing happened.
In the light of actual conditions, given by the President evaluation of the success of our science looks very exaggerated. It is sad that no one on the Board (except Fortov) gave Putin the real picture. Say third-rate things. Only say complimentary things. That mood not to spoil. Such is today’s degraded system of government, setiausaha further on the inclined plane of servility. Manual control, which is increasingly obviously incapable. As in the case with monetary policy, health care reform or education, the authorities bend their line to the end, varnishing the true outcome of their endeavors cleverly chosen numbers and General positive conclusions.
In fact, as a result of radical actions of the state, causes an irreversible loss of the Russian Academy of Sciences the pivotal role it played for centuries in domestic science, under the pretext of optimization of massively reduced brainpower — in this case the stated purpose of the reform is far from being achieved: the gap between Russia and the USA, China and other leading scientific powers only growing. Unfortunately, there is no indication that the real arguments will be heard by the President and the government. The President reported on the success — all is well, nothing to worry about.
