Agricultural Research and Education System in Belarus A need for a decentralized and market-oriented approach Dr. Oleg Nivievskyi and Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Ulrich Koester Consultant: BE Berlin Economics GmbH Schillerstr. 59 10627 Berlin Germany Tel: +49 30 206 134 640 Fax: +49 30 206 134 649 [email protected] Client: Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, Germany Mandatory: GFA Consulting Group, Germany © 2012 BE Berlin Economics GmbH. All rights reserved. 1 Executive Summary At first glance, the performance of agriculture in Belarus seems to be outstanding in comparison with other CIS countries. However, a more detailed analysis that takes into consideration not only output development but also resource use, leads to a less favorable picture. The huge inflow of investment accompanied by new technology in recent years has not improved factor productivity as expected. Many farms could not keep up with the pace of technical change and could not improve their efficiency under the new technologies. In other words, despite better equipment, machines, animals, plant varieties and variable inputs at their disposal, the farmers produced a smaller percentage of the maximum output possible with these new machines than with old ones. On these farms, it seems that management ability, training and education are scarce factors that do not allow keeping pace with the rate of technical change. The report is based on the assumption that the performance of the agricultural sector and the agribusiness sector could be improved by improving the efficiency of the agricultural research and education system in the country. Indicators that hint at an inadequate research and education system are the following: a) declining relative productivity of capital in agriculture against the background of massive allocation of physical capital to the sector, b) agribusiness and farm managers complain about the qualification of young academics and graduates, c) research in agricultural economics is isolated from the international community and d) the application to join European higher education was turned down due to non- compliance with the principles and values of the Bologna process. Institutional economics served as the basis for the analysis in the study. Organizations (universities, ministries, academies, policy makers and others) are the players of the game, and the institutions (legal framework, informal rules, formal and informal incentive systems on the level of organizations and the individual level) are the rules of the game. This approach identifies the effects of the current incentive systems and presents recommendations to align the interests of individual researchers and teachers with the interests of research users and the society as a whole. Lack of financing of the education system or lack of activities and engagement of those who work in the system are not the main shortcomings of the agricultural research and education system. Instead, shortcomings include the present state of the organization of the agricultural research and education system, as well as the prevailing incentive system governing the organizations and individual actors. Agricultural higher education is affiliated with the Ministry for Agriculture and Food of the Republic of Belarus (MinAg&Food) and includes two universities, two academies and 26 colleges, and different central and regional training and methodological cetres. 2 Higher agricultural education is oversized compared with western countries; agriculture’s share in the total number of students is more than six times larger in Belarus than in Germany. The individual organizations have incentives to increase the number of students, and students have incentives to get enrolled due to non-academic advantages, in particular related to military services. There seems to be no adequate quality control to secure high- quality education of students in field of agricultural sciences. The content of the curricula is largely determined by the Ministry of Education and partly by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. The individual organizations have little freedom in determining the content of the curricula and the content of the subjects. Consequently, there is significant inertia in the system. Adjustment of the content of subjects is needed as new research findings enter the teaching content. Universities should be granted more autonomy in shaping their academic content. In contrast to those in western countries, professors and lecturers at universities have a very high teaching load and with little time left for the research. Hence, it cannot be expected that the most recent research findings will be taken up in classes and that graduates will be well prepared for post-graduate research. Moreover, payment is related to teaching hours and exerts incentives to expand the teaching load at the expense of quality. Quality of teaching seems to be negatively affected by the strong incentives to continue teaching after retirement. Pensioners try to increase their low pensions. The quality of teaching in agricultural economics—among others—suffers from the lack of English of most teachers. English is the main professional language in international communication, and those who do not know the language are outside the international profession and cannot offer lectures of high standard. The quality of the education system also depends on the quality of students. It seems that the organizations of agricultural higher education are not attractive for the best high school graduates. Necessary changes include improving employment opportunities for students, raising the standard of education and research and intensifying the contacts to the agro-industrial complex. Students should know mathematics and English at an advanced high school level; furthermore they should have worked for four to six months on a farm or in agribusiness. The universities should accredit the farms or companies, monitor the internships and be in charge of accepting students’ reports on their internship. The connection between universities and agribusiness could be further strengthened if universities would offer an annual conference in which to present findings that might be of interest to the farm and agribusiness sector. New staff should have proven knowledge of English and should have at least one publication in English in an international journal or at least one presentation in English at an international conference. In order to increase the inflow of new qualified staff, retirement of 3 the teaching staff should generally be at the normal age of retirement in other fields of the economy. Exceptions can be in order if there is a genuine evaluation of teaching quality, including evaluation of students. The curricula should be changed drastically. The present degree of specialization seems to be too narrow, and the number of lectures in general economics is too small. According to the present curricula, students are trained inadequately in policy analysis, price formation and market analysis, quantitative methods and farm management. Moreover, even students in agronomy should have to take some mandatory subjects, such as introduction to general economics, farm management and agricultural policy and price and market analyses. Adjusting the method of teaching to an international style should also be considered. Instead of presentations or even dictations by teachers the latter should motivate students to ask questions and to discuss. The aim should be not to impart knowledge, but to teach students to acquire knowledge in a fast-changing world. Research in agricultural sciences and economics suffers greatly from the present organization of the universities, the Academy of Sciences and the interaction with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Research is about creation of knowledge and will be done most efficiently by creative researchers who identify new areas of research where new knowledge can be created and where they expect to be innovative. Hence, the individual researcher needs a lot of freedom to identify his own research topic and set his own research agenda. The present procedure in Belarus is not in line with these principles accepted as international standard in open societies. Instead, there prevails a highly hierarchal structure. Due to the legacy of the Soviet past, the main research used to be done by the Academy of Sciences, whereas the universities were involved mainly in teaching. There is an ongoing process to expand the research capacities of universities, in particular by introducing research component into educational universities through opening up research institutes. This change may eventually lead to a structure that is comparable to that of western universities. However, the implementation in one stroke would be costly because the upgraded universities would request more funding in order to enlarge their research capacity. Improving high-quality research is not just a matter of funding, but of qualified and motivated staff. The additional finances would not be used efficiently if they were not used for new, highly qualified staff. Hence, the research and educational universities should expand slowly, based on available new staff. It will take time to institute a new viable research system in agricultural economics that will be internationally competitive. It should be accepted that the new system has to be internationally opened and has to strongly welcome the inflow of new staff. As the flow of