>From Johnson's Russia List 3611
#8
From: "Marian Dent" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Graduate exchange programs
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1999
Without getting involved in the visa debate, I want to express my agreement
with Sarah-Lindemann's comments on educational exchanges (JRL 3605).
After working for a number of years for a US organization that sometimes
sent Russian lawyers to the West for training trips, I came to the
conclusion that, while the trips invariably did the recipients a lot of
good, US government money could be better spent training people here. I
went to work for a Russian university and tried to do exactly that, but was
not particularly successful due to organizational bureaucracy, and also due
to the minor problem that the Russian professor's salary wasn't enough money
for me to live on. Finally, my husband (a Russian lawyer) and I started our
own NGO for training Russian lawyers and law students (where the money isn't
much better but the satisfaction level is higher).
Our NGO is not grant funded (except for a couple of small, very specialized
grants), but charges tuition to those who are sponsored or employed by
Western companies, runs test prep and English courses to generate extra
income, and uses the money we raise to fund the training of law students who
really need practical legal training and can't afford it. I pass on this
information so that readers can identify my potential biases up front.
This past spring I was invited to a conference at Yale on the future of aid
to legal reform in Russia, where I sat on the legal education panel. My few
minutes were dedicated to stressing that, if the US government really wanted
to help Russian legal education, it should do so not by funding more Russian
students for graduate study in the US, but by funding Russian students for
studying in Russia. Note the figures that Ms. Lindemann points out--the
astronomically high per-student cost of a Muskie compared to that of
training students in Russia. (We once trained thirty students here in
Russia in a year long program on NGO law for less than the cost of one
Muskie recipient. Several of those students are now working for NGO's, and
one has started a private law firm specializing in NGO clients.)
Taking the best Russian students to US law schools can actually harm the
long term prospects of graduate legal education in Russia. It takes the
best graduate students out of the Russian classrooms, and it makes a Western
LL.M or J.D., rather than a Russian Candidate of Laws, the competitive
degree for the top law jobs. Indeed, almost all my law students see a US
LL.M. as a required credential for employment with a multi-national law firm
in Moscow. Thus, even top Russian law schools are perceived as less
prestigious and have trouble obtaining and keeping graduate students.
Finally, when we fund young Russian law professors and aspirants for study
abroad we must consider the affect on the teaching population in Russia.
Russian law schools are already having trouble keeping good professors and
graduate teaching assistants because of low budgets and pressure from
private employers. To take a professor to a Western school, even if they
only stay a year, further depletes the good teachers available in Russian
law schools.
I argued at the conference that US money would be better spent on funding
student loans for bright Russian students to study law in Russia. Right
now, students who pass entrance examinations study for very little money
and, as a result, if a Russian law school wants top students it has to
tighten its budget and has trouble building the facilities and teaching
staff that will create or maintain the success of the institution. If the
school needs money, it drops its entrance requirements and starts a
"commercial" faculty, where the students are less bright, but often end up
better educated due to the faculty's ability to pay more to its teachers.
Even the brightest scholarship students are treated as a burden to the
school, rather than as the school's clientelle.
By establishing a cadre of top students, who can pass an entrance exam but
who enter the Russian law schools funded from the West, you create an
incentive for the law schools to compete for these students by the
facilities, courses and teaching staff they offer. You also create a way
for Russian law schools to educate top students while still increasing their
budgets and paying their teachers; and you create less need for accepting
unqualified students for higher degree programs. All this, in the long run,
would increase the quality of Russian graduate education.
Don't get me wrong--I believe that the recipients of Muskies and other
funding truly benefit from the study abroad opportunities. I also believe
that a good number will return to Russia, and agree that some will influence
the future direction of this country. Muskie is a good program, but I
believe that it is a very costly way to gain the benefits afforded.
So what was the result of my remarks at the conference? My comments went
completely against the grain of the American academics on the panel, as well
as with the Russians (who, having studied in Western law schools, were quick
to express the benefits of what they had received.) Thinking back, I
should have expected as much because I should have more closely examined the
goals of exchange programs. I was mistakenly thinking of indiginous capcity
building--the goal we most publicly proclaim--as the main reason for sending
students to the West for training. But of course there are many additional
goals. One is the increased exposure of the American students and law
schools to the Russian students. American graduate schools have a
valuable interest in accepting these top Russian students, who add diversity
and a new intellectual perspective to their classrooms. Another goal is
the Westernization of Russian intellectuals in a way that would not happen
from our funding their study in Russia. And, it's true that at the moment
graduate law students can't get as high quality education in Russia as they
can in the West. So, I realized that my ideas should not be implemented to
the exclusion of exchange programs. But still, exchange programs should be
kept at current levels or more limited, and additional funding, when
available, should be channelled to other, less costly and potentially more
beneficial programs.
In conclusion, in our lauding of exchange programs and the notable good that
they do, please don't forget that if we really want the long term good of
Russia (especially in the area of legal education--a key to a democratic,
law-based state)we should consider options that fund top Russian graduate
students to stay in the Russian schools. Only in that way can we help build
the quality of Russia's own graduate education system.
Marian Dent
ANO Pericles
American Business & Legal Education Project
Tverskaya Ul 10, Suite 319
Moscow 103009 Russia
7-095-292-5188/6463
[log in to unmask]
*******
Andrew Jameson
Chair, Russian Committee, ALL
Languages and Professional Development
1 Brook Street, Lancaster LA1 1SL UK
Tel: 01524 32371 (+44 1524 32371)
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|
