ISSN 0798 1015

Vol. 38 (Nº 55) Year 2017. Páge 12

Waymarks of the Life Projects of Higher Education Graduates of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

Señalización de los proyectos de la vida de los graduados de la educación superior de la República de Sakha (Yakutia)

Alina KOZHUROVA 1; Ekaterina PAVLOVA 2; Ekaterina NEUSTROEVA 3; Yurii KORNILOV 4; Egor NIKOLAEV 5

Received: 20/07/2017 • Approved: 15/08/2017

Content

1. Introduction

2. Literature Review

3. Method

4. Results

5. Discussion

6. Conclusion

References

1. Introduction

Currently, Russian society is in a difficult situation. The socioeconomic crisis is characterized by a fall in production in many regions of the country, reduction in the number of work places, and unemployment on a large scale. In the conditions of the socioeconomic crisis, young specialists with no production experience are not competitive in the labor market, and in all countries of the world they are considered to be a socially vulnerable group of the population. In such difficult conditions, the employment problem of youth who have completed their studies and received a diploma of higher education becomes particularly relevant (Audzeichyk, 2015, 2016). At the regional level, this problem is relevant, in connection with some objective and more subjective factors affecting the waymarks of the youth's life plans. Highly qualified specialists leave the Arctic regions and rural area, which negatively affects the socioeconomic development of the Arctic regions, on the welfare of the local indigenous population.

Youth occupies a special place in the social structure of society. Not only its future, but the future of the region, the state depends on the formation and development of their life position, value system, life aim, waymarks of life plans, their own views on the surrounding reality. On the basis of values accepted by a person, their life priorities and waymarks of life plans on the future life-sustaining activity are formed.

445 municipalities have been already created on the territory of the republic, including 34 municipal districts, 2 urban districts, 48 urban and 361 rural settlements (Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), 2016). Due to the specific features of the country's socioeconomic development, the demand for diversity in the regional labor market in Yakutia is very limited. The most demanded on the territory of the republic are still professions related to medicine, education - teachers of various profiles including primary school teachers and pre-school teachers, agricultural specialists and others. As the statistics data show, the number of economically active population is roughly distributed by employment: In the first place - people employed in the economy. About 20% of the average number of employees is employed in education, about 10% in mining operations, about 10% in health care, 10% in transport and communications, 7% in electricity and housing and communal services, 6%, in processing industries - about 4%, in agriculture -3%. The average age of the employed population is 39.6 years. The largest part of the employed population (over 25%) has a higher professional level, about the same as the secondary vocational and about 24% - general education.

From the data given in the Public Reports of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), it is known that basically there are vacancies in remote schools in rural and arctic regions. The teachers of the English language, mathematics, primary classes, the Russian language and music literature, as well as psychology teachers and pre-school educational institution educators are the most in demand in the educational institutions of the republic. In the republic systematic work is organized on the graduates’ employment of secondary and higher education in the direction of pedagogical and psycho-pedagogical education. From the total number of employed graduates, more than 60% go to work in the rural area. For example, in 2015, a total of 733 graduates were employed in educational organizations, of which 528 (67.9%) are in rural areas, including 111 in the northern and arctic uluses. The Republic in every way supports the youth, who after graduation chose the life-sustaining activity in the rural society; in this connection, the regulatory and legal framework has been approved at the level of the government of the republic, and programs have been developed and implemented for the financial support of young specialists. So, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), young specialists who come to work in educational institutions under the contract, pay travel expenses and carry baggage to the place of destination, a one-time allowance in the amount of a monthly salary, while confirming the appearance of a young specialist for work.

In order to attract teaching staff to educational organizations, the subprogram "Provision of housing for pedagogical workers in rural schools and medical workers in the health institutions of Arctic and northern ulus" has been continued. For example, in 2015, 30 teachers were sent to remote rural schools in the Arctic and North.

Aim and objectives of the research. The aim of the research is to study the waymarks of life plans of the higher education graduates in the current conditions of higher education of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). To achieve the stated aim of the research, we determined the following tasks: Analysis and synthesis of foreign and domestic authors papers; development of a questionnaire on the identification of students' preferences affecting their life-sustaining activity after graduation at the university and a qualitative-quantitative sample of respondents among student youth; statistical analysis of the results obtained and justification of the conclusions on the research topic.

Student age in our terms is a vague concept. This is a separate age category and a special period in a person's life. Student age, according to Russian psychologist B.G. Ananiev, is a sensitive period for the development of the basic sociogenic potentials of man. Age, when a student has all the opportunities to develop comprehensively, their mental processes and phenomena. This is the most favorable time for excellent training in a secondary specialized educational institution or a higher school (Ananiev, 1974).

For the first time, the problem of adulthood in Russian psychology was posed by N.N. Rybnikov in 1928. This new section of age psychology was called "Acmeology". The student's age applies to this section.

In psychology, the student age as a separate psychological, social and age category began to stand out only in the 60s of the 20th century when studying the psychophysiological functions of adults. Ananiev and his psychological group.

Studentship as an age period in a person's life refers to the adult period of a person's life. In developmental psychology and in age psychology, this period is understood as the transition phase from maturation to maturity. Sometimes this period is attributed to late adolescence or early adulthood. This period covers 18-25 years. The inclusion of the student period in the adult period of man is based on a sociopsychological approach (Ananiev, 1974).

The question of positioning the students within the framework of the age periodization is in a special way. Many specialists consider the student's age to be a transition stage from adolescence to adulthood.

V.V. Pakeeva believes that: "Studentship, as an age category, correlates with the stages of adult development and represent a" transition phase from maturation to maturity", it is defined as late adolescence - early adulthood (18-25 years)". In turn, L.S. Vygotsky emphasizes the transitional aspect of student age: "The age of 18 to 25 years is more the initial link in the chain of adult ages than the final link in child development" (Pakeeva, 2015).

As subjects in our research graduates of 21-23 years prevail. It is this age that corresponds to the stage of youth, according to E. Erickson (Lawrence and Robert Coles, 1999).

For students, the highest instrumental value is to obtain higher education, to obtain a diploma. And this in the future will allow them to achieve high achievements, "a certain position in society and receiving material benefits" (Butakova, 2009).

The process of socialization continues in the period of early adulthood, as well as after its completion; we learn new social roles in such contexts as work, independent life away from parents, prolonged intimate relationships with another person, marriage and family. Many people acquire and assimilate new roles within their communities, joining the ranks of various clubs members, civic groups and religious institutions (Clausen, 1986).

There are also cases when, after studentship, many people begin to understand that this is not their sphere of activity, according to which they would go to work, many do not like the work or activities themselves, others do not like the salary. Many graduates also cannot get employed, due to the fact that there are too many experienced specialists, skilled personnel in the field of activity where they want to work. There is also a category of graduate students who want to get additional higher education in other professions for general self-development.

Thus, the study of the psychological characteristics of the student age, their values, aims in life, seems to be very important and necessary stage of the experiment for our research.

In order to research the graduates’ life plans of higher education in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), a sociological survey was conducted (April-May 2017), which included 17 questions. Of these, 14 questions were of a closed type, and students had to choose an answer option close to their views, and the remaining 3 questions were of an open type, here students were asked to express their opinions and respond independently. Questions for the questionnaire were grouped by thematic and problematic principles. For example, lifestyle preferences in the future, the attractiveness of urban and rural areas, employment problems in choosing a place of residence and further plans after graduation. The sample of the research was targeted at the students of the fourth courses of higher educational institutions of our republic, experiencing a strategically important stage of future employment, migration and life self-determination. We specially selected for the survey more demanded future staff in the regional labor market of Yakutia, this is: schools teachers, doctors, lawyers, land surveyors, technologists and engineers in the field of agroindustrial complex, electrical engineering in the sphere of integrated industrial development of the mining industry, workers in the culture and tourism development sphere.

In the survey, the full-time students of the educational institutions of higher education of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) took part, they are graduates of the bachelor's program of the Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk and Yakutsk State Agricultural Academy. In total, the survey covered 393 graduates, including 302 women and 91 men aged 19 to 31 years. So, the survey respondents were students: The Pedagogical Institute - 14% (56 people), the Institute of Languages and Culture of the Peoples of the North-East of Russia - 20% (79 people), Neryungri branch of the NEFU - 10% (32 people), the Yakut State Agricultural Academy - 19% (78 people) The Medical Institute - 30% (121) and the Faculty of Law - 7% (27).

Regional features are determined by the heterogeneity of rural and urban agglomerations by their size (large and medium-sized settlements) and various natural and climatic conditions throughout Yakutia. Youth born in Central Yakutia (28%), Western (15%), the Arctic zone (9%), urban areas (23%) and other regions of Russia (1%) are predominant in the sample. Respondents from different nationalities took part in the research: Sakha - 80%, Russians - 12%, small peoples of the North (Even, Evenki, Yukagir) - 7%, other nationalities (Bashkirs, Buryats, Ukrainians) - 1%.

Today, the main aim of vocational education is to create conditions for the formation of a socially adapted, competitive, professionally competent person (Platonova, 2011). The period of adaptation to the urban life of modern rural youth has declined significantly, in comparison with the early generations of students and it is worth noting that youth mainly associate their future life with urban environment with developed infrastructure and communication, rather than with rural life-sustaining activity. The problem that emerges is that there is practically no return migration of young specialists to rural areas; therefore, one of the modern policy directions is the material support of economically active population, in particular of young labor resources, in rural settlements of the region.

According to the survey, the proportion of students who come from rural areas is 58%. The share of rural students is observed in the Pedagogical Institute (78.6%), in the Institute of Languages and Culture of the Peoples of the North-East of Russia (73.6%) and in the Yakutsk State Agricultural Academy (69.2%).

An analysis of the students’ survey results on the preferences in choosing a future place of residence and work showed that the majority prefer the urban lifestyle, regardless of their place of birth, the specifics of the institution and the specialty at the moment. So, 62.7% of respondents associate their future life with the city, and only 14.3% with the village. As the survey showed, almost one in four of the respondents had difficulty in choosing a preferred lifestyle. Students born in urban settlements are much more likely than those born in rural areas to prefer the urban lifestyle that they are accustomed to (126 students). The share of life preferences in urban areas among students born in the city is 85%. Along with them, 5.4% (8) of graduates responded, who connect their future life with the rural area. From the point of view of rural students who came to study in institutions of higher education, they preferred a more promising place of residence choice in rural areas - 20%, but 30% found it difficult to answer, since they were not yet determined with the final choice.

At the same time, we correlated the results for 2010 and for 2017 with a comparative analysis of the future place of residence preferences, depending on the place of their birth. Here there is a positive dynamics in the preferences of graduate students in choosing a future place of residence in rural area. It is worth noting that in 2010, the survey also included the issue of choosing a preference for place of residence in the future for university students in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). At that time, the aim of the survey was to research the qualitative characteristics of students at the stage of life self-determination and 602 respondents from ten divisions of higher educational institutions were included in the research.

Thus, over the past seven years (2010-2017), monitoring of the possible dynamics in the preferences development of different graduate students generations was conducted. So, it was interesting to observe the intentions of the graduates to connect their future life-sustaining activity with the rural area. Active work in universities and advocacy by employers to attract young professionals in rural settlements; to the return migration of the natives of the village for the purpose of good intention as "Homeland - as a launching pad for a career", at the same time, the patriotic education of students to love a small homeland, yield results. For example, even among urban students, the choice of urban area from 2010 to 2017 decreased by 5%, and the share of preference for rural area increased with a difference of 3%. Among the natives of the village, the place of residence choice in the city in 2010 was 61%, and in 2017, already 50%, a decrease with a difference of 11%. Therefore, the preference for rural area among villagers has increased from 13% (2010) to 20% (2017).  Thus, the process of developing and enriching the village with young specialists is under way.

Next, consider the planning of future place of residence by students and work, depending on the institution. For the analysis we chose the most popular specialties for the region, these are primary school teachers and general practitioners. As presented in the above Table 1, the highest share of rural students prevails in the Pedagogical Institute (78.6%), and in the Medical Institute it is almost 50% and urban (49.2%), and rural graduates (48.3%). Therefore, as a rule, the results are correlated with the indicators of place of residence choice, for example, in future teachers the planning of employment in rural area is much higher (29%) than for doctors (9%).

The reasons for the attractiveness of the city lifestyle by students were: The opportunity to find a good job (41%), comfortable housing (25%), the opportunity to get an education (24%) and more entertainment venues (theaters, museums, cafes, restaurants, sports facilities) (23%).

Students who gave preference to the rural lifestyle in the future, called the reasons: calmness and silence (66%), clean air (50%), natural food (35%), family and relatives (34%) and the answer "nothing attracts" is 2.3%.

Youth born in Central Yakutia (28%), Western (15%), the Arctic zone (9%), urban areas (23%) and other regions of Russia (1%) are predominant in the sample.... As a result of the survey analysis, they came to the conclusion that many respondents in the future plan in almost equal amounts of ratios: Rather stay in the city (23.7%) and go to work in the specialty in the area (23.2%). Further, according to the hierarchy of life plans, the answer is "master's in their specialty" (21.4%), which is important for the graduate to develop competitiveness of a competent specialist and in love for their future profession. The fourth place in the popularity of answers is occupied by "magistracy in another specialty" (10.4%) as an alternative to obtaining a second higher education. The answer "return home" was chosen by only 11 graduates (2.8%) from 393.

From the point of view of further plans after graduation depending on the university, according to the above analysis, the students of the Medical Institute have the first place in the answer "stay in the city" (28.1%), since half of the graduates are born in the city. On the specifics of the studies length, they plan to enter the residency (14.9%). Among the male graduates from the Yakutsk State Agricultural Academy, the Law Faculty, Neryungri branch of SVFU (Technical Institute), in the plan "other intentions" intend to serve in the army or engage in individual entrepreneurship. And the girls basically plan to take care of the child and, therefore, want to have freelance employment. 

Thus, life plans sometimes differ from the main aim of training - the training of a certain profile specialist. For students, in this case, the motive of achievements (pragmatic) is dominant, that is, their activity is primarily aimed at obtaining the final result of a certain level or product and for them this result manifests itself as a value in itself, as a life strategic plan. The very process of solving learning problems becomes important to them only because of its correlation with the final result: receiving points and scores, passing the test, the state examination, protecting final qualification papers and obtaining a diploma. In the main, realization of these priorities of our subjects happens spontaneously. Gradually, with age maturity and with changes in personal or public life in the university, the graduate's last courses are subject to a re-examination of interests or revaluation of values, which is supported by the starting step in choosing a further action for life self-determination. 

At the same time, the availability of higher professional education, regardless of the motives for obtaining it, is generally perceived by students as one of the main components of future prosperity and success. This is due to the fact that the issue of life plans, in fact, is a question of the educational activities quality and the high level of training and practice during the period of training in the specialty in the university, the effectiveness of the future specialist professional training.

The research involved four-year students in full-time education at the universities of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) (bachelor) - the future popular labor of the republic: schools teachers, doctors, lawyers, land surveyors, etc. The research was designed taking into account regional features, determined by the diversity of natural and climatic conditions throughout Yakutia and the heterogeneity in the size of rural and urban agglomerations (large and medium-sized settlements). The sample is represented by the distribution of youth in the zones of Yakutia, by nationality as a percentage of shares.

An analysis of the students’ survey results showed that most prefer the urban lifestyle, regardless of their place of birth, the specifics of the educational institution and specialty at the moment. At the same time, almost every fourth respondent had difficulty in choosing a preferred lifestyle. Comparison of the results of the survey in 2010 and 2017 on the analysis of the preferences of the future place of residence, depending on their place of birth, showed a positive dynamics in the preferences of graduate students in choosing a future residence in favor of rural area.

Advocacy by employers to attract young specialists to rural settlements, active work in universities give results of return migration of the natives of the village. As among urban and rural students, from 2010 to 2017, the share of rural area preferences is growing, thus indicating the process of development and enrichment of the village by young specialists. When analyzing the planning of future place of residence and work in the village by students, the highest indicators are traced in the Pedagogical Institute. As a rule, the results are correlated with the indicators of place of residence choice, so in future teachers the planning of employment in rural area is much higher than that of doctors.

All these indicators speak about the existing problem of desynchronosis of the market of educational services and the labor market in terms of the preference of the village cadres. Undoubtedly, doctors and teachers are in great demand all over the republic, especially in the Northern regions of Yakutia. According to the aggregate answers of respondents, the reason lies in the weak development of the social and cultural infrastructure of rural area. But, nevertheless, it can also be stated that the rural lifestyle is more preferred by students - people from rural areas and those born in the city prefer the city. The entire mechanism of preferring rural area can be explained by the fact that the desire to change their social status, despite the minimum material resources. In this connection, there is a significant outflow of young people to the city with the appearance of ordinary problems for them in the absence of housing, complicated employment and low wages.

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1. Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Primary Education, Pedagogical Institute, North-Eastern Federal University, aa.kozhurova@s-vfu.ru, Kozhurova_2013@mail.ru

2. Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Primary Education, Pedagogical Institute, North-Eastern Federal University, ep.pavlova@s-vfu.ru, Eppavlo2010@rambler.ru

3. Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Primary Education, Pedagogical Institute, North-Eastern Federal University, en.neoustroeva@s-vfu.ru, Neusrtoeva-e@inbox.ru

4. Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Informatics and Computer Science, Pedagogical Institute, North-Eastern Federal University, iuv.kornilov@s-vfu.ru, Kornilov@lenta.ru

5. Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Pedagogy and Methods of Primary Education, Technical Institute (Branch) Neryungri, North-Eastern Federal University, ev.nikolaev@s-vfu.ru , Egor_nikolaev@mail.ru