(6) PhD is an approximate equivalent to your 'kandidatsky' degree. Someone with a PhD is entitled to call himself or herself 'Doctor'. However, PhDs are now so common that many people do not bother to use the title.
(7) A Vice Chancellor is equivalent to your 'rektor'.
(8) A Chancellor holds, ostensibly, the most senior post in the university, but the position is largely ceremonial. Real power lies with the Vice Chancellor. (9) Faculty is used in the same sense as in Russia (not as in America).
(10) Department is what Russians call a 'kafedra'. (We do not use the word Chair - this is a standard error in Russia - and the reason is that a 'Chair' in English means the position of a particular Professor. We can say, 'Professor Smith holds the chair of Modern History'. The implication is that if Professor Smith retires someone else must be appointed to sit in that Chair.
(11) Dean is used as a title in some universities and not in others; it can mean many different things, though rarely 'the elected Head of a Faculty' and never the 'Head of a University' as in America.
Britain has about one hundred separate universities, all of them state universities. There are no private universities in our system (apart from the tiny Buckingham University which caters mostly for Americans). Each university has a finite number of places for undergraduates, and each place is funded by the state. So school leavers are competing for a limited number of places which are awarded on academic achievement and ability judged on the basis of examination results, together with school reports, personal reports and interviews. There are no 'commercial students' for undergraduate degrees. (See later for details of how these places are funded.)
In this chapter I will be concentrating on the experience of students at English universities. Because the Scottish school system has a different structure and curriculum, Scottish Universities also differ from English Universities. (For example the degree course usually lasts four years rather than three.) In other ways, particularly in funding, the Welsh system is also different from the English one.
English school pupils who hope to go to university have a number of curriculum and examination routes in order to find a course and a university that suits them, but by far the most common of these routes is the A-Level (or Advanced Level of the General Certificate of Education). A-levels are a curious but central examination in the English system. Originally devised when only 3% or 4% of eighteen-year-olds went to University, they were exams that were deliberately deep and demanding for the very 'academic' children who took the course at school. They were also narrow in focus, in that pupils studied three, or at the most, four subjects. There was no sense of a broad education for those about to enter university, presumably because it was assumed that they were broadly educating themselves. Today, about 43% of school leavers enter higher education, so clearly an exam designed for a very small academic elite has had to change over the years. It has been adapted for a much wider range of academic ability, and yet it is still narrow in focus: most pupils still take only three subjects at A-level. By the standards of many of them, it remains a difficult, rigorous, even profound examination. By the standards of the cleverest 20% or so, it is not difficult to score top marks in all three subjects.
By the time they take their A-levels most of these school leavers are eighteen years old, a year older than Russian school leavers. They have already taken A-S levels, a kind of halfway exam for the A-level which helps teachers and pupils to work out who will succeed and who will fail in passing the A-level exams with 'good grades'. After A-S levels, these boys and girls begin (heir final year of schooling, a particularly hardworking and hectic final year. At this point, in September or October, they start the process of gaining a place at university for the following academic year.
Let us suppose that you are one of those school pupils in your final year. You begin by applying to three or four universities which offer courses that attract you. During January and February you may be interviewed by two or three of those universities and then offered places at - let us say - two of them provided that you get specified grades in your A-level subjects. In May and June at the end of your school year you take your A-level exams (which are, as I explained in the chapter on Education, a series of written exams). The papers are marked by trained teachers, and the results are announced in late August. Suppose you are eager to study History, especially mediaeval history. A high-ranking university has offered you a place if you get A-A-B in your results. And another university has offered you a place if you get A-B-C. When you tear open the envelope of the letter which announces your results you know very well that your life will be profoundly affected by the result. You have an A in History, a B in Economics and a C in French. You cannot with those results get a place at the higher-ranking university, but you can accept the offered place at your second-choice university. Immediately you inform the university that you are accepting their offer of a place - and at the same time you remind yourself of all the good things about this university to which you are going to dedicate three years of your life!
Now let us look at university entrance from the point of view of the universities. Because the state pays for each place, and because universities are, up to a point, given more funds according to the results of their students in their final exams, it is in the interests of each university to select the cleverest, brightest, most intelligent and hardworking students from those who have applied. And because the A-levels (and exams on alternative routes to university) are marked anonymously, there is no place for special financial arrangements (otherwise known as bribes). A board of university teachers for each subject interviews the applicants during their last year at school, looks at school reports and previous results, and then offers the best students a place dependent on future exam results.
The effect of this scheme is that neither university teachers nor possible new students know until the end of August if they actually have a place at university or not. It also means that thousands of students, who did not get the grades they needed for the course they wanted, must quickly think about alternatives. This is why at the end of August tens of thousands of students are rushing around looking for courses where their actual A-level results would be acceptable while the universities are trying to fit the best students into unfilled places on less popular courses. If this sounds confusing, it is! But it arises from an effort to offer places on thousands of different courses to more than half-a-million applicants and to be as fair as possible to those who prove that they have ability, initiative and - if necessary -flexibility.
From this account you can see one major difference between the British system and the Russian system. ('British' because this is true for students in all parts of Britain.) Most students in Britain choose a university which is not in their home town. Distances between towns are much shorter, but distance is not the point. Most students want to achieve their independence by going away from home. Going to university means looking after yourself not only in your organisation of your studies, but also in being responsible for your accommodation, food, social life and finances. Russian students living in hostels will recognise much of this; those Russians - and British - who continue to live at home inevitably miss out on some crucial experiences of being eighteen in a reasonably prosperous, developed country.