At the Pedagogical University the regular consultations of the Rector Rouben Mirzakhanyan was held with the Heads of Departments; the Deans of Faculties were also present. On this meeting there were two issues on the agenda: academic hours’ calculation standards and admissions to the MA courses for 2015-2016 academic year.
The Head of the Educational and Methodological Department, Vice-Rector Mher Melick-Bakhshyan made a report regarding the first issue on the agenda; he presented the academic hours for planned admissions to full-time and distant learning courses at 10 Faculties, 46 Departments and 7 all-university departments in 2015/16 academic year.
The Vice-Rector suggested that in the current year too, when determining the workload of the Departments the academic titles and positions should also be taken into account and define academic hours for the new lecturers who had successfully passed the competitions.
“Today, the ASPU has MA courses for 49 professions which have been reviewed, and in each profession new courses have been included, course descriptions have been developed. A good deal of attention was particularly paid to changes in selective courses. All courses and their descriptions for the University’s MA programmes have been adjusted to the European standards”, the Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs mentioned during her report about the MA admissions 2015/2016.
The Vice-Rector highlighted that the quality of MA courses was annually improving, new modern directions were being created; course descriptions with new grading system of 100 points were created for first year MA courses, research functions and implementation mechanisms had been reviewed, research steps had been presented and enumerated.
The best academic potential of the country is included into the MA courses, specialists from the RA NAS institutes are included, the academic research component is emphasized, and the biggest achievement is that the majority of topics for dissertation theses refer to the University’s direction and have practical meaning”.
Nevertheless, Srbouhi Gevorgyan considered the involvement of students from other Universities into their MA courses as a problem for postgraduate education, in the line with frequent absences of some MA students, the necessity of equipment for effective laboratory work, ensuring the professional mobility of the MA students, etc.
The Rector of the University highlighted that consistent work was being carried out to improve the postgraduate system, all necessary conditions were created, the tuition fees had not been raised as well as there seemed to be no lack of qualified specialists.
“We need to encourage the best MA students, solve their employment issues upon graduation by involving them into various academic spheres”.
On this issue, several Heads of Departments made their suggestions to particularly solve the problem of students’ dormitory which would foster the organization of admissions of international students as well as stimulate the use of multilingual education tools.
