The government speaks of high level of education, which would develop and be at the same level with European standards in order to drive the economy forward. It turns out that there are many people that don’t believe these words not only in Armenia, but out of Armenia as well.
An electronic source has published a part from The New York Times concerning Armenia, in which expert of international center of higher education Philippe Altbach made a list of salaries of lecturers in 28 countries. As The New York Times reports, Armenia is in the last place in this list. According to this research, the average salary of lecturers is 405 dollars. In China the salary level is 259 dollars, but people can buy more products with this money. The first three countries with high salary rates for lecturers are Canada (9485 dollars), Italy (9118 dollars) and South Africa (9330 dollars). The fourth and fifth countries are India and the USA.
Why did they select these 28 countries? They have targeted two groups of countries – those that have brain drain and brain gain. Armenia is in the first group of countries. The article is entitled “How Much Is a Professor Worth?” In consideration of Armenia’s place in the list, it means that professors don’t cost anything in this country.
There is not separate section about Armenia in the report, but there is some information concerning Russia, which is very typical about Armenia as well. “The Russian government wonders why their scientists are leaving from their country. This research gives answer to that question – because they are not paid well. This is not missile science, but many governments do not understand this simple truth,” writes the report. Of course we don’t think that the authorities do not understand that payment is important, but in fact it does not change the situation. The brain drain is not too much now, but it is not because of the government but because of the fact that there is less demand now.
Going back to the main topic, even according to the official statistics the salaries of university professors are very low, even compared to other sectors in Armenia.
As it is written above, the average salary in education sector in 2011 was 80,000 drams. For example, in the banking sector salaries are 3.5 times higher.
There is a very interesting fact that is worth looking at. The real salaries in those sectors are higher than reported. In many sectors employers do not register the real salaries officially not to pay much tax. This is done especially in the sectors of trade and construction. However, in the sector of education people receive as much as it is reported officially. This means that salary in the sector of education is much less than the average salary of all sectors.
The official statistics and information published by the New York Times show that education should be top priority. Now let’s go back to the announcements concerning the importance of having high level of education to support the economy. Is it real that a professor that is paid 300-400 dollars a month may be stimulated to provide high level education? Will any young man go through the scientific path if he/she sees how low professors are paid?
There may be people who may say that the financial potential of the country is low and the state cannot afford paying high salaries for professors. However, we believe this is not justified in consideration of the fact that the state is spending a lot of money on trips, luxury cars and other “nonsense” things. It is unacceptable when the police catch a professor that has taken bribe and is using this fact for PR purposes to show that the government is fighting against corruption. In fact this cannot be good PR because the state should be shame to leave professors in a situation when they can dare to take 100 dollars bribe.