How does a private college operate, whose director was deprived of accreditation for his civic position?

For names in “Chronicle of the Persecution of Scientists”, which is joint­ly con­duct­ed by T-invari­ant and CISRUS, is the sto­ry of the strug­gle of spe­cif­ic peo­ple for civ­il and aca­d­e­m­ic free­doms in Russia. Therefore, we decid­ed not only to record these cas­es, but also to tell in detail who and why decides to go against gov­ern­ment pres­sure in sci­ence and education.

Many peo­ple think that in mod­ern Russia it is impos­si­ble to pub­licly speak out against war with­out dire con­se­quences for the per­son and for the orga­ni­za­tion he leads. The sto­ry about inspec­tions and refusal to accred­it one of the largest col­leges in Russia, Novokolledzh, the deci­sion of its direc­tor, can­di­date of his­tor­i­cal sci­ences Sergei Chernyshov to leave his post against the back­drop of an anti-war posi­tion and refusal to con­duct “Conversations about impor­tant things”, infor­ma­tion about numer­ous denun­ci­a­tions addressed to him, about The fact that he instills in his own son the “val­ues of paci­fism” part­ly con­firms these fears. But not real­ly. Although Sergei was rec­og­nized as a for­eign agent and left the post of direc­tor of the col­lege, the col­lege itself suc­cess­ful­ly start­ed the aca­d­e­m­ic year, and its new direc­tor Yuri Lobanov and Sergei Chernyshov him­self do not give up their pro­fes­sion­al and civic positions.

How does a pri­vate col­lege oper­ate with­out a license? What allows its lead­ers to head an edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion with a non-stan­dard approach to learn­ing in the mod­ern rigid net­work of Russian edu­ca­tion? Should you be afraid to express your opin­ion? Yulia Chernaya spoke with the for­mer and cur­rent lead­ers of Novocollege — Sergei Chernyshov and Yuri Lobanov.

Not vocational school

The idea of open­ing a pri­vate col­lege, unusu­al for Russia, with rea­son­able fees for stu­dents, was con­ceived by a young his­to­ri­an from Novosibirsk, Sergei Chernyshov, in 2017-2020, when he was study­ing for a mas­ter’s degree at the Higher School of Economics:

— We were told how uni­ver­si­ties can be struc­tured accord­ing to the mind. Nothing new: indi­vid­ual edu­ca­tion­al tra­jec­to­ries, unique skills, open edu­ca­tion­al envi­ron­ment, human-cen­tric­i­ty, etc. At HSE itself at that time, a lot was being imple­ment­ed. Returning to Novosibirsk, I looked again at the uni­ver­si­ty where I worked then. The same ideas were expressed in words. But in real­i­ty it turned out to be a com­plete fraud. A lot of things coin­cid­ed, there were peo­ple who were also excit­ed about the idea. And since I was a neo­phyte in sec­ondary voca­tion­al edu­ca­tion, I had no col­lege expe­ri­ence, so I was able to try to orga­nize some­thing as close as pos­si­ble to the ide­al­is­tic idea that every­one is talk­ing about. Many teach­ers came with expe­ri­ence in sec­ondary voca­tion­al edu­ca­tion. We have expe­ri­enced sev­er­al crises when we could have tak­en the path of con­di­tion­al voca­tion­al school No. 5.

Sergey Chernyshov

Today Novocollege is one of the most large edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions where it was pos­si­ble to imple­ment a mod­el of indi­vid­ual edu­ca­tion­al tra­jec­to­ries. With this mod­el, an indi­vid­ual sched­ule is drawn up for each stu­dent with his own list of sub­jects, depend­ing on his vision of the future and his per­son­al capa­bil­i­ties. Monitors col­lege man­age­ment and atten­dance. Approximately 5% of stu­dents study for free for their aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess, but to receive this ben­e­fit you need not only to pass the sub­jects well, but also to attend them carefully.

— Each stu­dent choos­es sub­jects in one way or anoth­er relat­ed to their future spe­cial­ty, — explains the cur­rent direc­tor of NovoCollege, Yuri Lobanov. — For exam­ple, there is a set of 60 dif­fer­ent cours­es relat­ed to design. Of these, our stu­dent choos­es 30 that he needs as a design­er, for exam­ple, cloth­ing, inte­ri­ors or a web design­er. Of course, the stu­dent must make an effort and decide what exact­ly he will study. Yes, tutors, teach­ers, and par­ents will help him, but the fun­da­men­tal deci­sion must be made by the stu­dent him­self. Perhaps this respon­si­bil­i­ty for one’s choice, for one’s life, scares some­one away from our col­lege; per­haps it is eas­i­er for some­one to have the direc­tor or par­ents decide every­thing for them. But Novosibirsk is a big city where dif­fer­ent peo­ple live, includ­ing those who want to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their lives. They are pre­cise­ly the ones who need our Novocollege today.

This year, dur­ing the first wave, 350 fresh­men were enrolled in NovoCollege (in total there are about 1.5 thou­sand peo­ple study­ing at the col­lege). This is a lit­tle less than We take into account the num­ber of fresh­men last year (there were 400). But Yuri Lobanov looks at the sta­tis­tics with optimism:

— Firstly, there are 350 fresh­men at the moment. In October-November, based on the expe­ri­ence of last year, we will most like­ly have an addi­tion­al intake: the edu­ca­tion sys­tem in state insti­tu­tions did not suit some­one, some­one want­ed to see if we could enroll the first year, they decid­ed to do so after lis­ten­ing to reviews, etc. 

Secondly, this year we increased the fee by one and a half times. That is, col­lege income has increased by at least 20-30 per­cent com­pared to last year. This allowed us to increase, for exam­ple, teach­ers’ salaries. We have the high­est teach­ing salaries in Novosibirsk sec­ondary edu­ca­tion by a large mar­gin. We bold­ly com­pete with uni­ver­si­ties for teach­ers in this regard. The min­i­mum cost of an hour at Novokolledzhis 390 rubles, in some uni­ver­si­ties this is how much a professor’s hour costs. And the max­i­mum cost of an hour is555 rubles, the cost of an hour depends on the rat­ing of teachers. 

Thirdly, we enrolled a full-fledged first year with­out accred­i­ta­tion. This is a very impor­tant case for us, and, per­haps, for all Russian edu­ca­tion. We are very glad that in our case, accred­i­ta­tion turned out to be less impor­tant than a unique edu­ca­tion­al prod­uct and atmosphere.

Accreditation or death?

NovoCollege real­ly doesn’t have accred­i­ta­tion right now. Yuri Lobanov says that in this case there are only two ways—all ways to get it or just work with­out accred­i­ta­tion. But will the lack of accred­i­ta­tion be a death sen­tence? College accred­i­ta­tion gives the stu­dent the oppor­tu­ni­ty to receive a state diplo­ma. It is need­ed pri­mar­i­ly for work in gov­ern­ment agen­cies, — Yuri Lobanov explains the sec­ond option. — But gov­ern­ment agen­cies — These are a few per­cent of vacan­cies on the labor mar­ket. And for most employ­ers, nei­ther a state diplo­ma, nor even a diplo­ma from NovoCollege, or any oth­er is impor­tant. A port­fo­lio, expe­ri­ence in spe­cif­ic projects and skills are much more impor­tant to them. A state diplo­ma is also impor­tant for those who are going to go to a state uni­ver­si­ty — with­out it it will not be pos­si­ble to enter there. But sta­tis­tics say that only 10% of col­lege grad­u­ates try to enter uni­ver­si­ties, although approx­i­mate­ly 40% of stu­dents plan to receive high­er edu­ca­tion in their first year. Where does this 30% “dis­ap­pear”? They are prob­a­bly mak­ing a dis­cov­ery: they have already received every­thing they need for life in col­lege, and the uni­ver­si­ty will not give them any­thing fun­da­men­tal­ly new.

— I think for those who did not give NovoCollege accred­i­ta­tion this was one of the ways to kill it, — says Sergey Chernyshov. — The cur­rent Minister of Education Sergei Kravtsov, head­ing Rosobrnadzor, mas­sive­ly closed pri­vate uni­ver­si­ties, often depriv­ing them of accred­i­ta­tion for com­plete­ly flim­sy rea­sons. 99% of uni­ver­si­ties, hav­ing lost their accred­i­ta­tion, actu­al­ly closed: a state diplo­ma is is the main thing that stu­dents went to these edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions for. There are two excep­tions — Shaninka (Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences) and the European University. I think that these two uni­ver­si­ties gave their stu­dents not only a state-issued piece of paper, but also a unique edu­ca­tion­al prod­uct (which includes knowl­edge, an idea, a com­mu­ni­ty, acquain­tances, and much more). 

We were treat­ed sim­i­lar­ly: they did not give us accred­i­ta­tion — every­thing should fall apart. But mea­sur­ing peo­ple by your­self — is a big and com­mon mis­take. The same is true of peo­ple who are sure that if I myself hold lib­er­al views, then I will active­ly impose them on others.

Sergey men­tions two more dis­ad­van­tages of study­ing at an unac­cred­it­ed col­lege. Firstly, young peo­ple do not have a defer­ment from the army (which is very sig­nif­i­cant in cur­rent real­i­ties). Secondly, Novocollege stu­dents are not enti­tled to a dis­count­ed trav­el pass.

Chernyshov and Lobanov believe that this is illegal.

College — it’s fashionable

According to the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, today 60% of 9th grade grad­u­ates and 30% of 11th grade grad­u­ates choose sec­ondary voca­tion­al edu­ca­tion pro­grams. Yuri Lobanov says that such growth is asso­ci­at­ed with the demo­graph­ic and eco­nom­ic situation.

— On the one hand, the chil­dren of the baby boom of the late 2000s grew up to col­lege. There are just a lot of them demo­graph­i­cal­ly. On the oth­er hand, real incomes of the pop­u­la­tion are falling in the coun­try. As a result, few­er and few­er house­holds are will­ing to sup­port a child for at least 5 years, and at the most pay for his edu­ca­tion, and then wait a cou­ple of years until he gets “real expe­ri­ence” by work­ing for pen­nies. Many choose sec­ondary spe­cial­ized edu­ca­tion, which is cheap­er, short­er, and, as a rule, more practical.

Yuri Lobanov

Yuri Lobanov says that many uni­ver­si­ties have also begun to open col­leges. And enroll­ment in such sec­ondary edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions may be high­er than in the uni­ver­si­ties “at which” they open..

— Most pri­vate col­leges in Russia actu­al­ly copy the edu­ca­tion sys­tem in pub­lic col­leges, it’s just that the web­site design is more fun, and the edu­ca­tion­al con­tent the same, — explains Yuri Lobanov. — It’s like fast food: cheap, famil­iar, with­out any prob­lems. It may not be very tasty and not very healthy, but it’s on every cor­ner. Novokolledzh is more like a decent small restaurant.

Sergey Chernyshov draws my atten­tion to anoth­er inter­est­ing nuance in the 2023 col­lege admis­sions campaign.

— What do you think were the lead­ing spe­cial­ties in sec­ondary edu­ca­tion? Wreli­able and uncon­di­tion­al first place in the spe­cial­ty “Law Enforcement.” In Novosibirsk, one of the col­leges this year recruit­ed 13 groups in this spe­cial­ty and only three groups of pro­gram­mers. And so it is everywhere.

“Talking about important things” and teachers

Sergey Chernyshov believes that it was the refusal to hold “con­ver­sa­tions about impor­tant things” at NovoCollege that became the rea­son for the inspec­tions and revo­ca­tion of accred­i­ta­tion. However, this does not stop Sergei from con­tin­u­ing to repeat that “teach­ers who teach such lessons will go to hell.” 

This word­ing influ­enced his rela­tion­ship with col­leagues, who removed him from the chat of the heads of pri­vate col­leges in Russia. Formally—not because of “lessons talk­ing about impor­tant things.” And for his com­ments about the direc­tors of pri­vate col­leges, first col­lect­ing sig­na­tures against the threat of mobi­liza­tion of their stu­dents, and then, with no less zeal, extras for a ral­ly on Red Square in hon­or of the acces­sion of four new regions. Sergei believes that the very exis­tence of NovoCollege and the posi­tion of its lead­er­ship is a reproach to oth­er teach­ing staff:

— Teachers and prin­ci­pals often say that they sim­ply have no choice, that they are forced to do some­thing heinous or to car­ry out for the sake of their stu­dents, school, col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty. But the exam­ple of Novokolledzh lit­er­al­ly screams the oppo­site. My exam­ple says that the direc­tor can say that war - is bad and he will not sup­port it. And here I am, alive, healthy, a trig­ger for those who were afraid to do this.

The new head of the col­lege, Yuri Lobanov, is not going to return “Conversations about Important Things”. 

— Firstly, New College sim­ply does not have the tools that would allow these lessons to be con­duct­ed the way they were intend­ed orga­niz­ers. We sim­ply can­not “ensure turnout”: stu­dents them­selves choose which sub­jects to take. And I have not heard from a sin­gle stu­dent or his par­ent a desire to attend such a course. These are free peo­ple who pay for edu­ca­tion­al ser­vices. No one can force them to pay and attend this course. 

Secondly, you need to under­stand well that among the stu­dents of this course there will def­i­nite­ly be peo­ple with dif­fer­ent views. We have those whose loved ones are right now par­tic­i­pat­ing in hos­til­i­ties on the ter­ri­to­ry of Ukraine, there are chil­dren of those killed or wound­ed there, and there are those who cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly do not sup­port the war. Our teach­ers learn to talk about war in the class­room with such dif­fer­ent atti­tudes, teach and learn to hear each oth­er. But they are just learn­ing, and this is very, very dif­fi­cult. We need spe­cial teach­ing tac­tics and a spe­cial lan­guage of speaking. 

Yuri says that at NovoCollege it’s cus­tom­ary to dis­cuss every­thing open­ly, you can’t just “lis­ten to the les­son and leave.” That’s why Lobanov thinks he’s too busy to car­ry out such This is pos­si­ble only after good prepa­ra­tion, and until then it will not ben­e­fit either those who con­duct them or those who par­tic­i­pate in them. 

Problems of school and teachers

Teachers are, with­out a doubt, a very impor­tant social group and the largest group influ­enc­ing the for­ma­tion of soci­ety in any coun­try. In the case of Russia, accord­ing to Sergei, this is often not the best part of it.

— How does a per­son get to school? He, most often, goes through dou­ble neg­a­tive selec­tion, Sergei assures me. — First he enters the ped­a­gog­i­cal insti­tute, because he was not accept­ed any­where else on the bud­get. And then, if he couldn’t get a job with more mon­ey, he goes to work at school. These are the major­i­ty of young teach­ers. And old­er teach­ers, unfor­tu­nate­ly, often have rub­ber brains, which are best able to oscil­late in res­o­nance with the “par­ty line.” When was the last time the aver­age his­to­ry teacher opened an aca­d­e­m­ic book or research paper on his­to­ry? Sergey is a can­di­date of his­tor­i­cal sci­ences, and is now prepar­ing to defend his doc­tor­ate in the same dis­ci­pline. He sus­pects that “the lev­el of sup­port for CBOs is high­ly cor­re­lat­ed with a per­son­’s lev­el of his­tor­i­cal illit­er­a­cy.” It is impor­tant that Sergei him­self is a can­di­date of his­tor­i­cal sci­ences, and is cur­rent­ly prepar­ing to defend his doc­tor­ate. Therefore, he can ful­ly appre­ci­ate the degree of this very his­tor­i­cal illiteracy.

— 26% of teach­ers in Russia are pen­sion­ers , the aver­age age of a teacher is offi­cial­ly 47 years old, Yuri Lobanov describes the sit­u­a­tion in an ordi­nary high school or col­lege. — That is, these are peo­ple who have been teach­ing approx­i­mate­ly the same thing for about 25 years. And these are peo­ple who, as a rule, work two jobs, because oth­er­wise they sim­ply can­not feed their chil­dren. Do you think they are ready to move to new pro­grams? Give up every­thing and learn to work in a new way? And it’s not even about the peo­ple them­selves — the resources they have do not allow them to do this pure­ly technically.

Does this mean that there is no oppor­tu­ni­ty to influ­ence the change in teacher per­son­nel? Sergei Chernyshov believes that Russia has pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence in this area:

— There is a rather suc­cess­ful exam­ple with the “Teacher for Russia” project. Graduates of the best uni­ver­si­ties in the coun­try are offered to work as teach­ers in a rur­al school. They are paid an addi­tion­al 20-30 thou­sand per month in addi­tion to their salaries. By the way, even if we paid all teach­ers extra, it would cost us much less than the mil­i­tary oper­a­tions that we are cur­rent­ly wag­ing. They also rent hous­ing and help method­i­cal­ly. Of course, you need to send 2-3 such teach­ers to a spe­cif­ic school at once, oth­er­wise they will eat you. 

Chernyshov says that this project has actu­al­ly been work­ing for sev­er­al years and in just two or three years the school is becom­ing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. Why?

— Firstly, chil­dren get a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent social expe­ri­ence; they see in prac­tice that they can study not in the near­est town, but at uni­ver­si­ties in Moscow and Novosibirsk. Secondly, the teach­ers them­selves are chang­ing. They are grad­u­al­ly turn­ing from an ever-whin­ing com­mu­ni­ty into peo­ple who need some­thing. There is even a com­pe­ti­tion among grad­u­ates for this pro­gram. Besides, I per­son­al­ly believe in sci­ence. Therefore, I believe that lus­tra­tion is nec­es­sary in the teach­ing envi­ron­ment, but it should be car­ried out on an aca­d­e­m­ic basis. It would be worth ask­ing every his­to­ry teacher what sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles he has read over the past 5 years. And say good­bye to those who have not read such articles.

Irritant foreign agent

On May 27, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation rec­og­nized Sergei Chernyshov as a for­eign agent. Later, lawyers man­aged to find out the rea­sons for this deci­sion. The explana­to­ry note stat­ed that Sergey:

- pub­lished a list of rec­tors who sup­port the war;

- neg­a­tive­ly assessed the fact that mil­i­tary com­mis­sars spoke at schools and colleges;

- crit­i­cized “Conversations about impor­tant things”;

- put for­ward the idea that “the author­i­ties use his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry for their own purposes”;

- called NovoCollege “an island of peace and humanism”;

- called the teach­ers who meek­ly con­duct “Conversations about Important Things” and oth­er pro­mo­tions of the event “a weak-willed herd”;

- pro­posed to rename schools tor­ture centers;

- sep­a­rate blame for the quote “teach­ers in Russia do not belong to them­selves”, and “the lev­el of com­pe­tence in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem is below par”;

- told how one Novosibirsk col­lege hung the let­ter Z on its facade;

- told how he wears a yel­low-blue bracelet bought in Batumi;

- crit­i­cized teach­ers who jus­ti­fy murders. 

And besides, he talked with for­eign agents, which means he was under for­eign influence.

On August 3, the Leninsky District Court refused to chal­lenge Chernyshov’s IA sta­tus. But he does not intend to stop, plan­ning to exhaust all pos­si­bil­i­ties: ahead of him is the city court, and, if nec­es­sary, the region­al, Supreme Court. Often cit­i­zens who have received the sta­tus of for­eign agents are try­ing to leave Russia. Many of them have already done this. Chernyshov does not want to leave, but wants to go to the end.

— In Russia, what is scary is not the sever­i­ty of the leg­is­la­tion, but the unpre­dictabil­i­ty of law enforce­ment prac­tice. Analyzing the sto­ries of dif­fer­ent intel­li­gence agen­cies, I have not found clear tra­jec­to­ries of why peo­ple become or do not become for­eign agents, nor how the state inter­acts with them after receiv­ing their sta­tus. A case is opened against some­one after six months, against some­one after a year, and against some­one they don’t open a case at all (the lat­ter cur­rent­ly includes the vast major­i­ty of IA liv­ing in Russia). But a case can be opened with­out IA sta­tus. No one expect­ed that Evgenia Berkovich would be arrest­ed for the per­for­mance.

Sergei also has a ver­sion of why he is so annoy­ing and attracts close atten­tion from the “patri­ot­ic” pub­lic of Novosibirsk, which writes angry com­ments to his VKontakte account:

— First of all, they don’t under­stand why I even speak out. I am not a politi­cian, I have not expressed and do not express any polit­i­cal ambi­tions, I have nev­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in ral­lies, and I do not go abroad. Secondly, the uncer­tain­ty of the posi­tion of Novokolledzh. The col­lege quite clear­ly artic­u­lates a non-oppo­si­tion­al, but mod­er­ate­ly lib­er­al anti-mil­i­tarist posi­tion. At the same time, the col­lege was cre­at­ed with­out state mon­ey, with­out the mon­ey of the oli­garchs, we did not squeeze out build­ings from any­one for pen­nies, did not give bribes, the col­lege does not coor­di­nate with the con­di­tion­al “cura­tors from the state” the appoint­ment of a new direc­tor — This is a prece­dent. In addi­tion, offi­cials are often guid­ed by a sim­ple prin­ci­ple: “if they sud­den­ly ask you some­thing lat­er, they will have some­thing to report on.”

From New College to New University

Recognized as a for­eign­er, who resigned from the post of direc­tor of NovoCollege, Sergei Chernyshev not only does not plan to leave Russia, he plans to open a new uni­ver­si­ty in the near future — Siberian University of Liberal Arts and Sciences named after Yadrintsev. Nikolai Yadrintsev is a Russian pub­li­cist, writer and pub­lic fig­ure of the 19th cen­tu­ry, researcher of Siberia and Central Asia, one of the founders of Siberian region­al­ism, dis­cov­er­er of ancient Turkic mon­u­ments on the Orkhon River, the cap­i­tal of Genghis Khan Karakorum and the cap­i­tal of the Uyghur Khaganate in Mongolia.

— If I just want­ed to make mon­ey, I would open an insti­tute of psy­chol­o­gy or pro­gram­ming, data analy­sis or some­thing sim­i­lar. These are the areas that are cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing a renais­sance. But I don’t want to do that. I sin­cere­ly believe that, first of all, we need good lib­er­al arts uni­ver­si­ties with a good lib­er­al arts education.

Sergey is con­fi­dent that the cri­sis that soci­ety is cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing is a cri­sis of human­i­tar­i­an knowl­edge. He believes that the Soviet mod­el of a spe­cial­ized uni­ver­si­ty has long out­lived its use­ful­ness, and 80% of offi­cials in uni­ver­si­ties and the Ministry of Education are weath­er vanes who try to pre­dict the par­ty line. This sys­tem needs to be changed, because it was the insuf­fi­cient lev­el of devel­op­ment of the social and human sci­ences in Russia that large­ly led soci­ety to cri­sis and war.

Text Yulia Chernaya

Yulia Chernaya  26.10.2023

education, persecu, repression, russian scientists, university