Guest article: Commercialization of Bulgarian education? Well, come on, it's about time

 

 

Martin Terpev

Education in Bulgaria was never saved - and was disgraced

We hear from politicians and read in their programs that one of Bulgaria's fundamental problems is the marketization, and specifically the marketization of education. To realize the anti-logic in this statement, it is enough to simply ask ourselves: What is the market, in fact?

No, the market is not some evil and mischievous creature that sits in the shadow of human life and bites and releases poisons at a convenient moment. A similar metaphor, I emphasize metaphor, can be made for the State. And no, the State is not the people and in no case is it the individual person. When talking about the State, it is important to remember that in reality we are talking about the state apparatus, composed of individual, specific people, vested with the exclusive power to take away and distribute resources and goods and to make decisions affecting the whole of society – to coerce everyone else.

Unlike the State, the market is a network of voluntary and mutually beneficial human relationships and is made up of people, without coercive power (unless, of course, the State intervenes and distorts things). The difference is significant, mainly because of one distinctive characteristic of market relationships – voluntariness.

Voluntariness (the exclusion of violence) ennobles market relations, turning them into “I win – you win” relations. Thus, in a free market, through voluntary exchange (trade) and adequate signals, people easily and quickly understand what, when, where and in what amount they need – and are motivated to satisfy this need. In the market, offering values to others is not just a good wish, but an objective requirement for survival and development.

In this sense, the commercialization of education would mean that educational institutions produce the personnel needed by business and the economy as a whole at an acceptable price and with decent quality - and everyone wins. Is this bad? And is it like that at the moment? Again, not! There has long been criticism of a shortage of trained personnel.

 

Here someone may ask: Is the education system obligated to provide staff to businesses at all?

In fact, if we think about it fundamentally, what is education for, if not to do the things necessary for the current economic situation and to boost economic growth by producing the products in demand and exchanging them according to the evaluations that others give them?

 

It is clear that if business does not value highly enough and does not welcome the talent produced in universities, the latter become almost meaningless in economic terms. But it is even clearer that in such a situation, there is no question of commercializing education.

Rather, it is the opposite. State education in Bulgaria, considered by many to be something divine, “stands” angrily aloof from real life and the market and “expects” business and students /its clients/ to buy its products just like that, by presumption and without complaints or claims. And the main reason many educational institutions exist, despite pursuing such a policy, is that their maintenance is paid for by the state budget!

Imagine the public university you studied at or are still studying at. Think carefully about whether it would continue to be managed in the same way if there were truly a marketization of education.

Be honest. Almost all of us have complained, or heard complaints, that what is taught at our chosen state university is absolutely meaningless, or at best inapplicable to business and the labor market, is either not quoted at all, or is quoted at a very low price. A friend with an engineering education told me how he argued with a professor at the university where he studied that the machines that they studied in detail were already (that is, even while he was studying) becoming obsolete! Not to mention the circumstance, reminiscent of manipulation by the state machine, that in many specialties fundamental authors and concepts are omitted or glossed over. An example of this is the rather weak, if not non-existent, presence of the understandings and ideas of the Austrian School of Economics among students of economic disciplines, or the neglect of the discoveries of David Ogilvy, the founder of modern professional advertising, on the principles of creating a good advertising message, among students of Marketing and Advertising. To make the comparison even easier, I will say that this is like studying physics and ignoring or going over and over the leading concepts of Newton, or studying literature and not being familiar or not being sufficiently familiar with the work of Shakespeare, Cervantes Vazov or Victor Hugo. Of course, I do not want to impose standards, but simply to make a comparison showing the gaps in state education and the discrepancies between the desires and needs of people and the policy of the state education system in our country. And to emphasize and argue my thesis that there is no commercialization of Bulgarian education!

Assessments of the education system in Bulgaria

The centralization in the education system is extremely deep. It even affects the system for evaluating the results of its functioning!

In short, it is inadequate, when evaluating the state education system in Bulgaria, to give the assessment primarily to people who are part of the state apparatus and firmly intend to remain part of it. At the very least, we should also take into account a parallel assessment given by the labor market.

And this, the second, assessment is given – it is obvious in a natural way. In reality, in the current economic situation, a huge part of the product of the educational system is unsuitable. This unsuitableness is expressed in at least 2 directions:

• There is a lack of trained personnel, often due to a lax assessment system in public educational institutions

• Even if many staff are previously prepared in terms of the amount of knowledge acquired, their training does not meet the current needs of the business. Here 2 alternative situations arise:

- The knowledge of these people is morally outdated

- Their knowledge is more in demand in more advanced economies - and in reality, in such economies, the cost of these people's labor is higher.

When we look at things this way, other fundamental and disturbing trends, well described by Ludwig von Mises, begin to become clear.

Commenting on the inflation of economic bubbles, he explains that the wrong signals to entrepreneurs lead to the wrong investments, due to overvaluation of the markets and inadequate assessment of needs. Thus, entrepreneurs behave as if there are more savings, capital and buying attitudes than are actually available, and as a result, they produce goods of higher order, without sufficient demand and capital for them, driven by rising prices. And in the end, many of them go bankrupt and sink into debt, and the few savings accumulated in the economy drain. There is also a brain drain from the Bulgarian economy. And for a similar reason. Morally outdated knowledge and meaningless theories accumulated during studies and systematically subsidized by the State, make many people seek a living through activities that have nothing to do with their education - in a report by the National Audit Office for the period 2009-2012. It is stated that about 46% of graduates work in something else in Bulgaria, which often does not require higher education at all. The conclusion is that much of the money invested in these students is wasted.

 

The conclusions of the National Audit Office, stated on the website and derived from the study for the period 2009-2012, are eloquent. Here are the key ones, supplemented in places with some of my interpretations:

• The activities of state authorities in relation to higher education policy in Bulgaria are not effective enough and do not support the employment of graduates.

 

• There is a lack of a unified and adequate state policy for linking education with business needs.

 

• Only a quarter of graduates work in positions requiring higher education

 

• In Bulgaria, state educational institutions dominate – 37 state versus 14 private

 

• Conditions have been created for the market to be oversaturated with personnel from some specialties at the expense of others - that is, the problem of inadequate information and the boom mentioned by Mises appears and becomes more acute.

 

• There is no legal obligation to link institutional and program accreditation to national and regional labor market needs – that is, there are no significant constructive incentives for development due to the security provided by the state umbrella.

 

• The students' preparation is mainly theoretical - hence the logically weak implementation and low productivity, because students have difficulty developing professional skills or do not develop them at all.

 

On the other hand, there are people whose fields of knowledge are too modern for the modern Bulgarian economy. They simply have no chance to develop professionally in our country, as they have chosen professional fields for which there is not enough demand in our country and in which Bulgarian teachers have not yet entered sufficiently. The opportunities for these people are to realize themselves abroad /where they often have to take additional courses and/or work in low-skilled labor/. Many Bulgarian youth decide not to waste their time at all and directly head to educational institutions outside our country. This is how we waste time, valuable human resources and potential human capital – a large part of the people who study in our country waste time, energy and money accumulating unnecessary knowledge, while another part simply leaves the country, often before they have even set foot in state educational institutions. If there were a marketization of education, these things would not happen – at least not with such dramatic intensity.

The results are expected. Studies are constantly being published about the poor implementation of graduates in Bulgaria. The comparison between several trends indicated in different studies is interesting:

• Increasing participation in the education system– more and more people are enrolling in public schools

• Increase in government spending on education

• Over the years, the Bulgarian education system has seen an increase in the number of graduates

 

• About half of graduates find work in their specialty– according to data from various studies, about 25% of them

• Continued sharp discrepancy between the number of public and private educational institutions– approximately 2/3 of educational institutions in Bulgaria are public

• Emigration and applying abroad as a conscious choice of many young people

The picture is clear – in Bulgaria, poor-quality state education, not in line with real conditions and needs, dominates. State educational institutions in the country are centrally supported and, unfortunately, are chosen on a priority basis and/or by heart – the main reason for this is the distortion of signals and prices /which are also signals/, carried by state subsidies, which in most cases turns state education into the only education available to families. In addition, private educational institutions are obliged to comply with the state regulatory body. Thus, we once again enter the situation described by Murray Rothbart, in which the judge /the State/ must evaluate the curriculum entirely according to whether it fits into his/her own educational criteria. It is clear that the judgment will be in favor of the statesman’s judgment of the usefulness of education and state educational institutions.

Заплащането

 

Another aspect of the concerns of some professors and intellectuals (for which they do not fail to blame the market and capitalism) is pay. According to them, low pay in Bulgaria is a major reason for the outflow of promising personnel.

Here again, the mistaken perception of many people about education, its connection with the economy and its place in public life is evident. These people seem to place the payment of labor products alongside the other obligations and commitments of entrepreneurs and turn the logic upside down – instead of educators and those being educated trying to provide the necessary labor products sought by business, they insist, regardless of the situation, that business provide the necessary jobs and salaries for graduates – so that they stay in Bulgaria. This is crazy. If we cannot do the things that the situation requires, then we are inadequate, not the situation is to blame. The owners and managers of companies in Bulgaria do not do business simply to hire people – quite the opposite, they hire people to do business.

The confusion is old and its root is philosophical. Many intellectuals and university professors continue to believe that intellectual pursuits are elevated above, in their opinion, the rough and unsatisfactory reality. And they brazenly claim that business should provide them, WITHOUT THEIR ASSISTANCE, with the desired reality. It is precisely this understanding that lies behind the stubborn refusal of reforms to bring state education and education in Bulgaria in general closer to business and the market. And when they are confronted with the inexorable demands of reality imposed by the market, many intellectuals and university professors are outraged by them and pronounce the “verdict” that education has been bought and that is why it is bad.

What they really resent, however, is the merciless ability of the market to reveal... the truth. The market "brings" human judgments and human actions into the world of truth.

А истината е неудобна както за политическия, така и за интелектуалния “елит”. Тя е, че заплащането е ниско, защото:

• The Bulgarian economy is bad, the governments' economic policy is inadequate and business is stagnating - in practice, the market for personnel is shrinking and the price /labor remuneration/ is becoming lower and lower.

Regardless of the good wishes and the sweet, enthusiastic words, the reality is as it is. The Bulgarian economy is in bad shape, Bulgarian business is not making enough profit, or is simply struggling to survive, and it is not possible to pay high salaries in all sectors at the moment. The logic of development suggests first building a stable synchronization between education and business and improving the productivity of the economy, and then raising salaries.

And the logic that high salaries attract more good people is clear. But first, a stable economic foundation must be built.

• A large part of those trained in Bulgarian educational institutions offer knowledge and skills (the latter very rarely) that are not in particularly high demand by employers. This is a direct consequence of the fact that many educational institutions feel protected from competition and in practice do not function on a market principle.

• it is relatively easy to graduate in Bulgaria, which casts doubt on your preparation and puts you in direct competition with many graduates without any particular competitive advantages. In many educational institutions, you can regularly skip classes, not prepare coursework or prepare it mediocrely, not delve into the disciplines and still graduate with a decent result.

This mismatch between the demand and supply of labor logically gives power to the shortage in the hands of employers and lowers the price of labor products - lowers wages. Many employers seem to compromise and do a favor by hiring graduates. And in many cases, it really is.

The truth is that wages in Bulgaria will improve if businesses earn more and increase demand for staff, and if the education system continues the spiral of development by providing the necessary staff. Whining about more money stolen from citizens will not do it – at least not for everyone.

The truth is that education in Bulgaria will improve if it is forced by reality to submit to the demands of business - if it stops arrogantly hiding behind the skirts of the Mother State.