Master’s degree in Russia: narrative analyses of interviews with university administrators

Russian universities have developed a variety of practices for designing and implementing master’s programs related to differences in funding, geographic location, type of university, and a number of other factors. In the context of Russia’s withdrawal from the Bologna process and the search for its own model for the implementation of higher education programs, it is necessary to analyze the established practices for managing such programs. The article presents an analysis of semi-structured narrative interviews with administrators of Russian universities on the topic of the development of master’s education. The analysis showed that despite the wide variety of master’s programs and types of master’s programs administrators of Russian universities face similar problems caused by strict regulations of the educational process at the state level. Administrators take the position of executors, performing the tasks of higher authorities, while experiencing a sufficient lack of freedom for the meaningful development of the master’s degree programs. Administrators also fall into the typical traps of reducing the quality of education and the traps of metrics.

All of the above leads to «closing» of admission goal quotas with no real competition and without the quality of the applicant being considered. The nominal role of the academic supervisor of master’s programs results in the development of “outdated” programs and master’s programs are being opened without considering the demand of the labor market. Moreover, this also results in a formal approach to building an individual educational trajectory for undergraduates.

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