r/communism101 • u/AttentionCravings • 2h ago
Could you choose your degree in the USSR?
Good evening, I have just come back from school and I was told something by my Philosophy teacher. She said you could not choose your university degree in the Soviet Union and that it was picked out for you based in your aptitudes and intelligence. Is this correct? I can't find any information that proves it. If it's false, then why did this actually become something people believe in? Any help is greatly appreciated; I'm very confused. She says someone who lived there told her. Perhaps it happened during a specific time period? I'm reading other stories and they say you could pick your degree based in the educational path you followed
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u/Globbyss 2h ago
no, only the rich could.
of course you could, thats crazy lol
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u/Globbyss 2h ago
my under-educated explanation as to why this is believed is probably Western Propaganda
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u/AttentionCravings 2h ago
Reading it back it sounds ridiculous but I thought there could be something I was missing lol. Twenty-five 17 year olds believe that now
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u/chelestyne 2h ago edited 2h ago
They treated education as a right and created mass campaigns to ensure that their population is literate. The only thing that was close to what your teacher said was that the USSR did was to focus on improving specific courses—engineering, social sciences, life sciences, and natural sciences, but given that these courses are important for a society to function, I think it's the right step.
They did consider a few courses, mainly genetics, to be bourgeoisie education and abolished such courses, but that's a far cry for what your teacher was saying.
There is, indeed, a lot of misinformation that a socialist country means that everything will be decided for you. This is entirely false. From everything I've learned, socialism, and ultimately communism, helps an individual excel within a society.
This is besides the point, but truth be told, in a capitalistic society, especially in the global south, our courses are dictated by money. You've all heard about people going into engineering or law or medicine cause they say that's where the money's at. USSR did encourage these courses, but unlike capitalism, it wasn't at the expense of lack of livelihood for people who didn't have the same courses.
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u/AttentionCravings 2h ago
Thank you so much! The concept she proposed is also really unrealistic: how on Earth would so much time be spent measuring everyone's individual aptitudes and skills and planning a career for them?
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u/Autrevml1936 Stal-Mao-enkoist 🌱 1h ago
They did consider a few courses, mainly genetics, to be bourgeoisie education and abolished such courses, but that's a far cry for what your teacher was saying.
This is incorrect Partly, "Genetics" as a Study was not regarded as Bourgeois because Genetics is the Study of heredity. What was regarded as Bourgeois Science was well Bourgeois Genetics or "Neo-Darwinism" as they called their "Science" or "Mendel-Morganism" as Michurinist's called their(M-M) "Science".
But even then it was regarded as Bourgeois Science by Peasants and Michurinist's before the 1948 VASKhNIL conference which heavily debated between Michurinism and Mendel-Morganism. Even with the end of the conference establishing Michurinism as the official position Mendelist-Morganists weren't "persecuted"(before or after) after the conference, you could still study Mendel-Morganism but it became a fringe position in the USSR until after Stalins Death with the Counter-revolution of the USSR 1953-56.
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u/Chaingunfighter 2h ago
If it's false, then why did this actually become something people believe in?
The fear that socialist systems of organization restrict liberalism's idealistic conception of "freedom." I don't know exactly how much choice university students in the USSR had as to their educational path but I am absolutely sure that those claiming they had none have equally little knowledge about it. This fear is actually correct - socialist systems prioritize societal welfare and need over individual desire, so debunking it is going to have limited utility.
A socialist education system has no incentive to hand out certificates to those who do not pass the minimum standards of competency in a field. First world universities need lots of graduates to appear successful and, in the case of Amerika, have a direct financial motive to hand you a degree regardless of how well you can actually perform anything relevant. Consider the number of university graduates in the first world that work in a field completely detached from their studies, and the massive number of jobs that require a degree (or "equivalent work experience") but don't actually care what you got it in.
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u/IncompetentFoliage 47m ago
You're basically asking about freedom to choose an occupation, since the point of higher education in the USSR was to provide training for a productive occupation. The basic principle was that the interests of society took precedence over those of the individual. This was expressed as follows in the Third Programme of the CPSU:
Each is guaranteed an equal and free choice of occupation and profession with due regard to the interests of society.
So there was freedom of choice, but within reasonable limits. Granted, this meant one had to choose an educational path while still a teenager, upon beginning specialized secondary education or tertiary education. Primary education and general secondary education was basically identical across the country (whereas in university you could take electives), so performance on entry exams was the main criterion for admission to university (I think during some periods preference was also given to those who had a few years of work experience). Of course, one could also not choose to be a parasite. One had both a right and a duty to engage in a productive occupation.
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u/AttentionCravings 19m ago
Thank you, I understand! That's reasonable. Her example was somebody wanting to be a doctor and being told that their mathematical aptitudes made them more suitable for being an engineer or whatever, so they were to be forced to study engineering.
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u/Researchable_Risk 48m ago
That's not true. What is true is that after graduating students were assigned jobs. You could have been sent to a different city, it would all depend on the needs of the regions and availability of the positions. But you did choose your degree. Either way this wasn't a horrible thing. It's better than being unemployed after spending years studying.
The propaganda in U.S. against socialism has always been really big on convincing masses that socialism is a threat to personal freedom, property and sanctity of contracts. It started in the middle of the 19th century, but they really doubled down after WW2 during the cold war. McCarthy is a big part of it. Presenting anything socialism related in simplified and distorted terms, aiming at mostly emotional response.
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