Prestige of a University Teacher in Russia: Historical Retrospective and Current State

Abstract

The article studies the historical retrospective of the professional prestige of a university teacher in Russia and the criteria for assessing its current state. The study aims at finding out the «components» of the prestige of the profession in previous historical eras and at identifying modern teachers’ attitude to their profession in terms of their ideas about the evolution of the degree of its prestige. Within this interdisciplinary research, the historical aspect is represented by a narrative, which reflects a retrospective of the university history of the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods. The sociological aspect implies the method of semi-formalized expert interviews with 120 scientific and pedagogical workers of six Russian universities (2019–2021). The informants are divided into age groups: younger (35 and less years old), mature (36–50 years old), and older generation (51 and more years old). The authors come to the conclusion that the profession of a university teacher in the imperial and Soviet periods was of high prestige. The study of the works of Russian and foreign scholars shows that today there prevails the opinion about the crisis of this profession. The crisis of the 1990s caused the greatest damage to the professional prestige of higher education in Russia. The informants of different age groups compare the state of professional prestige in the first post-Soviet decade and now not in favor of the latter. When characterizing the social status of a teacher, the representatives of the older generation indicate the higher prestige of this profession in the past. The younger generation of teachers tends to take modern professional realities for granted. Two-thirds of the respondents, admitting the weaknesses in a university teacher’s social status, highly assess the respectability of the profession in general. According to the informants’ opinion, the prestige of being a university professor is decreasing because of the teacher’s individual characteristics, his/her financial state (and the level of financing in this sphere), in-class overwork, lacking time for full involvement in scientific research, and the students’ consumer attitude to the educational process. At the same time, there was noted the informants’ somewhat idealized perception of a teacher’s image in foreign universities.The results of our investigation might be applied by the authorities in order to take specific measures aimed at increasing the prestige of a university teacher. The research might be also of use for the universities’ implementation of personnel policy.