Where Did the Crisis Come From? The View of a Provincial. Reflections on Vadim Radayev’s Book “Education in Crisis”

Abstract

The article, based on the contents of this book, discusses a number of problems of modern education. Relying on the generational approach, V.V. Radaev formulates a number of peculiarities of millennials and zoomers, who live simultaneously in physical and virtual realities and are plunged into the arms of infodemia, new in comparison with the previous generations. These features are forcing both university administrators and professors to significantly change their approaches to education, since the usual forms are clearly not achieving their goals. However, it is easy enough to show that a number of habits that characterize the new generations are shaped by a series of transformations of the educational system, carried out in imitation of alien models, as well as by the market approach that pervades all modern society, with its reliance on legal relations that displace ethical relations and, consequently, lead to de-subjectification. This situation explains the pragmatism of students and the aggressive demand for good grades. By now there is a situation in educational institutions where the university professor (who has to take on extra workloads, write endless reports, etc.) has become the most powerless participant in the educational process, which has been taken over by efficient managers. Plus, there is a significant number of students who are paying for educational services and thus perceiving themselves as clients. Accordingly, the entire system of relations between the administration, professors, and students has been distorted. But V.V. Radaev has safely passed over these problems, and the peculiarities of the new generations are presented in the book as an objective process, as if behind it there were no specific people who carried out reforms and turned universities into commercial organizations.