Academician Kashin compared the scholarship for two percent of graduate students to a “competition dinner”

“The principle that we apply in relation to the remuneration of scientists is flawed”

Russian graduate students conducting research in the scientific and technical field received motivation for further scientific activity, — Vladimir Putin signed a decree establishing a scholarship for them in the amount of 75 thousand rubles. But the scholarship will not go to all 87.7 thousand graduate students (2022 data), but only to two percent of this number. The majority, alas, received up to 10 thousand and will remain so.

Photo: Natalya Muschinkina

According to the decree, the scholarship will be available to no more than 2000 graduate students and adjuncts (FSB employees or internal troops preparing a candidate's thesis) per year. All of them must study full-time and engage in research “as part of the implementation of the priorities of scientific and technological development of the Russian Federation.” A scholarship in the amount of 75 thousand rubles is awarded for a period of 1 to 4 years and is paid monthly.

Scientific supervisors will nominate candidates for the presidential scholarship. In this case, those who have previously been awarded grants and other scholarships, including presidential ones, will not be an exception.

The council on the appointment and payment of scholarships, which has yet to be formed, will consider applications from scientific supervisors and select the most worthy of the worthy. government of the Russian Federation. Two months are allotted for this.

The issue of decent scholarships for graduate students was raised back in 2020, when it became clear that the number of future scientists was steadily falling. Not many people want to spend time on scientific work for pennies, because the scholarship of the average graduate student does not exceed 9 thousand rubles. On the other hand, even among those who remain in graduate school, there are many who do not set themselves the goal of defending a scientific dissertation based on its results. For example, according to data for 2015, 25.8 thousand people completed graduate school, of which only 4.6 thousand defended their Ph.D. dissertations. There is an opinion that the rest simply do not have time to prepare dissertations, since, due to meager scholarships, they spend time on part-time work.

The scientific community believes that graduate students are not given due attention and even the presidential scholarship awarded to 2 thousand people is certainly a good thing, but it will not solve the problem with scientific personnel.

There is a basic income that every person recognized by society as a valuable specialist should receive, says RAS academician and mathematician Boris Kashin. – If science is the main activity for a young scientist, it should ensure his decent existence. But that’s not the case here: our army of thousands of graduate students receives 6-7 thousand a month. You see, they all work on the side outside of research! Then they come to the institute, tired, and have to develop world-class artificial intelligence here! Few, you must admit, are capable of this.

I believe that the very principle that we apply in relation to the remuneration of scientists is flawed. It's like a competition dinner.

– Of course. This is correct, but everyone else should receive a decent payment for their work, without the need for part-time jobs. My teacher, academician Sergei Mikhailovich Nikolsky, became a Stalinist scholarship holder in 1940 and received more than a Doctor of Science. But the scientist who did not have a high scholarship also received much higher than the average salary. Nikolsky told me what the salary ratios of young scientists were in terms of black caviar. In 1927, when he came to the institute as a young mathematics teacher after graduating from university in Dnepropetrovsk, he received 5 rubles per hour (you could take as many hours as you wanted), a professor — 15 rubles per hour, and a kilogram of black caviar cost 10 rubles The young specialist denied himself almost nothing: he could live in a hotel and eat in restaurants. In 1930, when the famine began, of course, it became more difficult for everyone, but still, his work was paid decently. Unfortunately, this principle has been forgotten for several decades.