PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS AND PROFESSIONAL DESTRUCTION: SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the social factors in the formation of professional deformations and professional destruction of university teachers’ activity, the most striking manifestation of which occurred against the background of reforms of the Russian higher education system since the early 2000s. The object of the study is the professional activity of university teachers. The subject is the professional deformation of university teachers’ activity and personality under the influence of social changes in the higher education system against the backdrop of reforms. These trends are reflected in the research field of professional destruction, professional deformations of personality and the activities of university teachers. The analysis revealed that the factors of destructive processes in the professional activities of university teachers are: the introduction of an effective contract; mandatory criteria for publication activity and scientometric indicators; mandatory performance indicator of the university and its divisions - “number of foreign students”; structural changes in the academic community: a significant increase in the number of administrative workers at all levels of management against the backdrop of a reduction in the number of teaching staff; changes in the quality characteristics of the management group; the presence of resource shortages, including funds for scientific research; distance and crisis of trust between university communities - students, teachers and managers; the decline in the prestige of higher education against the backdrop of its massification; formation of paradoxical motivation for student learning. It has been determined that both the understanding and the mechanism for achieving professional success of a university teacher are deformed: external success (expected performance) has a very high price: it is achieved by reducing internal success. Due to the impossibility of updating his/her professionalism, the specialist begins to distance himself/herself, to fence himself/herself off from true (personal, subjective, internalized) professional values in order to avoid a value conflict. He/she begins to use adaptive imitative practices, which are destructive professional behavior. The manifestations of the described destructions ultimately include: the prevalence of external (formal) indicators of success over meaningful, internal, personal ones; reduction of requirements for oneself as a professional; reduction of requirements for one’s professional activities; revision of professional values; “compromise strategies”, etc.