We are talking with Assoc. Dr. Shteryo Nozharov, Economic Advisor at BIA and Lecturer at the UNWE
What kind of personnel enter the higher schools?
The personnel who enter the higher education institutions after graduating from secondary education are not sufficiently prepared. It is necessary in the first year, even in the second year of the bachelor's education, to teach anew things that should have been studied in secondary education. Because without filling these gaps in their knowledge, they cannot move forward in a number of disciplines that require mathematical and other knowledge.
What are the reasons for this?
First of all, the mass outflow of prospective students to continue their education in Bulgarian universities and their orientation to foreign ones forced Bulgarian universities to significantly lower the entrance exams. In many places there are not even such, but it is accepted directly with a grade from the matriculation exam. This leads to the admission to higher education institutions of students who have no potential to graduate at all.
On the other hand, the funding of higher education institutions still depends to a large extent on the number of students they have accepted. This requires them to make compromises regarding their input, and unfortunately, because of the financing system, these compromises are made to a very large extent at their output. Of course, the level of exit is best known by the business that hires these personnel.
Last but not least, I must note the curricula in secondary education do not correspond to modern realities. This is evident from the poor results of the PISA-OECD tests of Bulgarian students. First-year students have the feeling that they are starting their studies anew when they enter a higher school.
How prepared do graduates of Bulgarian universities enter the labor market?
It is correct to give the answer to this question in specific professional fields of higher education. An attempt is made to measure the realization of the labor market through the Rating System of Higher Education, maintained by the Ministry of Education and Science, but the indicators in this system do not take into account a number of aspects that would make them more objective.
For example, regional imbalances in the labor market. The indicators "Contribution to the Social Security System", "Social Security Income of Graduates", "Taxable Income of Graduates" will mostly benefit the capital's higher education institutions. If you have graduated from a provincial higher education institution and are employed at your place of residence, it is not your fault that in your region the average social security income is equal to the minimum wage in your chosen profession. And vice versa, the capital's higher education institutions simply benefit from the fact that the average gross salary in Sofia is high and their graduates are realized there. Then, these indicators from the rating system of the Ministry of Education and Science do not tell us anything. And the indicator "Ratio of the social security income of graduates to the average salary for the district" does not provide enough information because it does not take into account the ratio of these two indicators to the minimum wage.
It also seems strange that the points in the Rating System by indicators "Application of Acquired Higher Education and Realization by Vocation" and "Application of Acquired Higher Education" for individual higher education institutions coincide. This casts doubt on whether these indicators measure the realization of the completed specialty at all, or simply report some realization of some position for a graduate. This means that the Rating System of the Ministry of Education and Science does not work and we do not have an objective idea of the quality of the output of higher education institutions in certain professional fields. In general, the indicators of the Rating System for the realization of the labor market do not provide objective information and need to be reconsidered in order to be useful for society and business.
Does the educational system meet the needs of the business and its students?
According to the National Map of Higher Education, maintained by the Ministry of Education and Science, the most popular specialties are those in Field 3 "Social, Economic and Legal Sciences". There are a number of defects in the by-laws, which allow higher education institutions to have an incentive to graduate each admitted student without objectively measuring the quality of their preparation.
For example, there is no unified normative definition at the national level of what a textbook, educational or teaching aid is. At the same time, the Law on the Development of the Academic Staff in the Republic of Bulgaria has a normative definition at the national level of what a scientific monograph is, but there is nothing about textbooks. In this way, it is not clear what the volume of textbooks should be, what should be the level of their originality, what content they should present from the curriculum in a particular discipline. For textbooks, there is no requirement to cite texts that are borrowed from foreign developments. Thus, it is impossible to understand what percentage of their author has translated from foreign textbooks and mixed them, but according to my observations, in many cases the borrowing by mixing reaches 80%. This leads to a bad image of Bulgarian universities abroad in terms of copyright compliance, but since we are a small market, there are no significant problems so far. In fact, textbooks are published on a conveyor belt, which teachers write for the purpose of career growth, and not to be useful for teaching students. In many cases, they are a kind of mix of several internationally known textbooks published by reputable universities. Sometimes "new" illogical terms and categories are introduced in Bulgarian education because the authors do not have a good command of the language from which they are translating. Then students cannot assimilate what is written in the textbook because it is illogical and this affects both their success in their studies and their knowledge.
Does the procedure for adopting curricula and programs in higher education institutions guarantee their quality?
According to the rules of the Ministry of Education and Science, business representatives must participate in the adoption of curricula and programs, but in many universities as "imaginary" business representatives, PhD students who are in low positions in various companies (secretaries, junior experts) are invited. The management of the companies does not even know that the respective secretary represents them, that they even represent the entire Bulgarian business in the adoption of curricula and programs in higher schools. In order to put an end to this "apparent" certification, business representatives must be appointed either by branch organizations or by nationally represented employers' organizations, and their powers of attorney must be attached to the minutes of the relevant faculty council.
Are the lecturers sufficiently prepared to ensure the quality and applicability of students' knowledge?
How is it determined which lecturer should lead a given lecture course? Currently, at least in Field 3 "Social, Economic and Legal Sciences" this is done on the basis of the topic of the dissertation or monograph of a particular lecturer. It doesn't matter that this dissertation or monograph is not indexed anywhere or in some insignificant index. It is not looked at that there are lecturers in the department or faculty in many publications or citations in Scopus who have international recognition. It is important who is closer to the management so that he has been assigned a good topic of the dissertation or monograph, on which he cannot write anything that can be indexed in a large index. In this context, who teaches Bulgarian students and are these the best prepared teachers? The question is rhetorical.
