MOSCOW. Nov 26 (Interfax-AVN) - The so-called Bologna system of education of Russian Armed Forces personnel will be abolished at military schools in 2013.
"Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has made the decision," a source familiar with the situation told Interfax-AVN on Friday.
"The Defense Ministry is considering the abolition of the so-called Bologna three-level education system - bachelor, specialist and master degrees, introduced at Defense Ministry schools in September 2011. The innovation infuriated officers and had a strongly negative effect on the quality of their education," he said.
"Control over leading military academies, universities and schools was handed over from the Defense Ministry's education department to commanders of the Armed Forces' arms and services," the source said.
"A decision concerning department head Yekaterina Priyezzheva, who is personally responsible for the breakdown of military education, will be made soon. As far as I know, she will be fired," he said.
He stressed that Priyezzheva initiated the new education system in the Russian Armed Forces, "first in the capacity of the defense minister's advisor and then as the head of the ministry's education department."
"The new education system in the Russian Armed Forces was introduced by the order of former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov two years earlier than planned. As a result, military institutes and academies were liquidated and personnel numbers were cut by seven times," the source said.
"For instance, the General Staff Academy became a supplementary education facility, which offered ten-months courses to officers. It will regain the status of the leading educational establishment of the Armed Forces now and start three-year courses next year," he said.
The Defense Ministry's education department "will most probably be transformed into a unit of the Defense Ministry's main personnel department," the source presumed.
He recalled that training centers of the Russian Armed Forces' arms were formed and a number of military academies and schools were enlarged in 2009 during the military reform. As a result, the number of military educational establishments reduced almost four times, from 64 to 17.
Three centers of the Russian Armed Forces' arms, eleven military academies and three military universities are training officers now. Twenty-eight institutes and research centers operate as their branches.