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YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS:
Starting from this year, regardless the independent organizational-legal and property form, the state and non-state higher educational establishments will organize the admission exams in a centralized order.
"This is a challenge for both the state, and especially the private educational establishments," Armen Ashotyan, RA education and science minister, said today during the scientific-practical conference of higher educational establishments. He said the proper calculation of middle-term and long-term strategies, consideration of the opportunities in the chain of educational services and the implementation of a policy, which enables to operate and develop, are among the mechanisms for meeting the challenge.
The minister says the adoption of the student-oriented system is an important step. "It requires from us a topical and ideological change in lecturers, teachers, and first of all in the consciousness of students," Armen Ashotyan said. He added that students must demand the realization of their educational right. "Maybe this requires some reform in order students manage to perceive that the only guarantee of prospect in our country and generally all over the world is knowledge," the minister said. He says it is quite funny that the minister, ministry and rectors are more concerned with the education of students than the students.
The minister says the lack of practical skills and capacity has a negative influence on the quality of higher educational system of Armenia. He added that the practical part will be in the limelight of the ministry.
The next problem, according to the master, is that the master's degree education is formal in Armenia. Many students complaint that a number of MA courses are the same BA courses with some changed titles. "Unfortunately the main part of our students applies for MA studies because of the complex that having a bachelor's degree means incomplete education: this is a misinterpretation of its mission," the minister said. He added that the bachelor's degree is a proof of full education and gives an opportunity to find corresponding job in the labor market.
Minister Armen Ashotyan says the internal and external mechanisms of scrutiny of quality will be invested in Armenia when the society is ready for it.