OREANDA-NEWS. November 24, 2011. The Commission of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) found that the Federal Service for Supervision of Education and Science (Rosobrnadzor) violated Part 1 Article 15 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”. Instead of the list of accredited programmes of continuing professional education, Rosobrnadzor included in the Appendix to the State Certificate of University Accreditation the note “Professional retraining and advance qualification of executive employees and experts according to the main educational programmes of the university”, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

Thus, if a university has the above note in the Appendix to its Certificate of Accreditation, state accreditation is automatically expanded to all programmes that the university will devise and offer within the period of state accreditation of an educational (research) organisation. This is contrary to the law on education.

At the same time, the list of additional professional programmes subject to accreditation is limited under Clause 9 Article 9 of the Law on Education (in the version that was in effect until 1st January 2011), which specified the federal state requirements to the minimum content of a programme of continuing professional education only for the cases provided for by the federal laws. In other words, if the federal law does not provide for the federal state requirements to a programme of continuing professional education, this programme cannot be accredited, and state-recognised certificates of education cannot be issued upon completing the programme.

Reference:

The new version of the law on education (June 2011) sets the federal state requirements to the minimum content of a programme of continuing professional education in the cases specified by the federal law, normative legal acts of the President of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Russian Federation.

Currently the federal state requirements are set only for the following programmes of continuing professional education:

- Advancing qualification of customs operations specialists;

- Advancing qualification of the heads of private security firms.

Thus, prior to 2011 Rosobrnadzor, in breach of Clause 9 Article 9 of the Law on Education, accredited programmes of continuing professional education, for which the federal state requirements had not been set. Universities that obtained accreditation for unlisted programmes of continuing professional education unlawfully obtained the right to issue state-recognised documents for programmes of continuing professional education in the absence of the federal state requirements, because educational organisations providing additional professional training do not have such a right at the moment. It restricted competition in the field of continuing professional education.

A representative of “REDNOR” Training Centre – an educational organisation for continuing professional education was present at the meeting of the FAS Commission and reported that “RENDOR” had been forced to terminate its activities and incurred financial losses due to inability to extend the accreditation period when the law changed in 2011. At the same time, universities continue issuing state-recognised education certificates upon completing continuing professional education programmes because instead of the list of accredited programmes of continuing professional education their Appendices to the State Certificates of Accreditation include the note “Professional retraining and advance qualification of executive employees and experts according to the main educational programmes of the university”.

Taking into account that state-recognised documents typically have defining value for consumers of educational services, universities that obtained accreditation for undetermined, not listed programmes of continuing professional education, have unlawful competitive advantages over institutions of continuing professional education.

According to Rosobrnadzor, on the market of services for continuing professional education there are 430 universities that have Appendices to the State Certificates of Accreditation with the above note, and 69 state-accredited organisations of continuing professional education. Overall, 79 organisations of continuing professional education (CPE) are present on the CPE market.

To identify the signs of violating the antimonopoly law on CPE market, on 25th May 2011 FAS Expert Council for developing competition in education and science had a special session and in October FAS organised a number of meetings with participant o0f the market of CPE educational services and an All-Russian conference “Important Issues of Managing an Institution for Continuing Professional Education. Changing the Law. Abolishing Accreditation. New Criteria for Quality Assessment. Licensing Control” (St Petersburg).

At those events educational institutions of continuing professional education stated that educational organisations offering CPE programmes should work under fair competition. To achieve this it is necessary that the rights for issuing state –recognised documents upon completing CPE programmes should be for universities that have CPE programmes as well as for CPE organisations in accordance with the law on education, particularly, in view of Clause 9 Article 9 of the law on education.

The FAS Commission found that actions of Rosobrnadzor violated the antimonopoly law and issued a determination to protect competition.

FAS would like to draw attention of the federal executive bodies exercising regulatory functions over education according to the scope of work of a particular federal executive body, and (or) having the functions for licensing certain types of activities, that normative legal acts issued by such bodies must not contain requirements to have state-recognised documents for continuing professional education programmes, for which there are no federal state requirements. Such requirements are the signs of antimonopoly violations.