Universities to test knowledge, personal qualities before admission

Менавіта такія змPresident Alexander Lukashenka has issued a decree setting out some amendments and additions to the university admission procedures. Under the document, universities will test both the knowledge and personal qualities of applicants. In order to enroll with prestigious faculties, it will not be necessary to obtain letters of recommendations from the local authorities. Instead, applicants will undergo psychological tests and will be interviewed.

The decree also abolishes all internal examinations on the subjects included in the nation-wide centralized tests (e.g. biology). However, exams on the Belarusian and Russian literatures, art and physical culture will remain effective, with their format to be established by university admission commissions. In addition, those wishing to become journalists, economists, lawyers, customs officers or diplomats will be filtered by interviews and psychology tests at universities.

 Uladzimir Zdanovich who chairs the Education Committee at the House of Representatives, has commented on this measure to the European Radio for Belarus.

 “I welcome this provision in the decree. I am glad that previous proposals about introducing a requirement for the letters of recommendations from schools or local administrations have not been taken into account. It is good that universities themselves will resolve this issue through tests or interviews”.

It is interesting that Mr. Zdanovich believes that the main idea of those tests is to obtain an applicant’s picture as a personality.

 “Let’s face it. Previously, applicants filed their tests, marks. But, personality could not be seen. Who is this applicant? However, it is very important in terms of not wasting money for training the given person”, he says.

The European Radio for Belarus tried to explore how these tests are going to be made in order to determine whether a person worth being educated. However, this decision is not in place yet. Mr. Zdanovich said every profession has a list of requirements. The tests will be based on those requirements. At the same time, he would not elaborate on what requirements exactly would be taken into account. We asked him to name those requirements for future lawyers, for example.

“I think that lawyers must be honest, in the first place. This strain can be identified through tests”, Zdanovich said.

When told that such categories like honest-dishonest, good-bad are rather subjective, Zdanovich assured that modern tests could cope with even harder tasks. Anyway, different from the centralized knowledge tests, these tests can be appealed. According to Uladzimir Zdanovich, your complaint will be reviewed within one day by a commission where you will have an opportunity of proving whether you are good and honest.

Universities decline to comment on the new rules. Most of the faculties that we reached said that they had not read the new regulations and had no comment. But, Mikhail Kavalyou, the dean of the economy faculty at the Belarus State University, said that the new rules did not apply to his department and that they were quite satisfied with the centralized tests.

“People have been admitted to my faculty, exclusive on the basis of the test results and an average mark of the applicant over the past five years. I am very satisfied with this, because we have noticed a certain correlation between an average mark for the tests and the marks they get while studying here”, Kavalyou said.

It is noteworthy that examinations were replaced with tests in order to avoid the “human factor” and make admissions as objective as possible.

Photo: www.gubkin.ru