"No to the Bologna process!" - a slogan (and policy) Alexander Lukashenka would agree with. CC-BY-2.0: CJCS / Flickr. Some rights reserved.In mid-February, Minsk hosted the very well-attended Republican Student Careers Forum. The large number of attendees even forced the organisers to close registration for the event ahead of the deadline — more than 1,500 people came to the forum. Some attended talks by business owners, others participated in workshops. But the largest crowds were at the exhibitors’ tables. Students and recent graduates were trying to find out how to get an internship or a full-time job.
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to find a job,” says Olga, who is about to graduate with an economics degree. “There are a lot of graduates. There is demand for people with a background in economics, but typically employers are looking for experienced hires.” Olga’s concerns are well-founded: students’ fears of remaining unemployed stems from the fact that there will be twice as many people graduating in 2017 than before. This is the result of the transition of Belarusian universities from five-year courses to courses lasting four or four and a half years. Current graduates will have entered university in 2012 and 2013, a total of 140,000 students.
Shorter university courses were the first step towards joining the Bologna process, the pan-European higher education area (EHEA) based on a tri-level system of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. Yet the modernisation of higher education in Belarus has yet to take place.
