Вот небольшая статья которая вышла в сегодняшнем номере журнала “Наука” о надбавках к зарплате для российских учёных. В нескольких словах её смысл можно выразить как “эта надбавка что мёртвому припарки”. Похоже все уже согласились, что российская наука вымирает как волосатый мамонт.

Measuring the Hidden Cost of a Pay Raise

MOSCOW—A mandate to increase Russian
researchers’ pay could have a disastrous
impact on long-term science programs,
according to institute directors at the Russian
Academy of Sciences (RAS). The pay
mandate, issued by the government in May
and made retroactive to January, aims to
boost core salaries in RAS to an average of
$1000 per month. But because the government
has not provided a commensurate funding
boost, RAS institutes are trying to balance
the books with economy measures,
including a 2-year moratorium on new
equipment purchases. “The recent decision
just ruins the development of science,” says
academician Boris Ioffe, a nuclear physicist
at the non-RAS Institute for Theoretical and
Experimental Physics in Moscow.
RAS Vice President Alexander Nekipelov
announced in May that the academy will cut
research staff from 53,000 to 44,000 by 2008,
beginning with a 5% reduction this year. This
will help pay for some salary increases; for
example, a junior researcher’s pay may climb
from $150 to $300 per month. But the government
also placed an indefinite freeze on
bonus payments that often go to active
researchers in recognition of factors such as
scholarly achievement and high-risk work.
The net result is that some top scientists will
see their pay decline.
“I’m glad that some people working in the
academy will get substantially bigger
salaries,” says Erik Galimov, director of the
RAS Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and
Analytical Chemistry. But he says this will
“not solve” the main problem: the declining
influx of youthful researchers. His students at
Moscow State University often take part-time
jobs at the institute, but “when it comes to
graduation, they choose jobs with salaries
dozens of times higher” than the institute pays.
And the mandatory salary boost does not
cover engineers, office workers, or financial
staff; Galimov predicts that they will become
more difficult to retain. If they leave, it would
“paralyze the work of the institute,” he says.
Ioffe estimates that “the only way” an RAS
institute director can implement the new
salary order is to severely slash spending in
nonsalary areas. “But you can’t do science for
nothing,” he says. “You have to buy materials,
new equipment.”
Leonid Bezrukov, deputy head of the RAS
Institute for Nuclear Research, regards the
equipment purchase moratorium as the main
threat. “Modern, expensive facilities are vital
for us. You cannot build them on the relatively
small” funds available from outside the government
budget, he told Science. He thinks
that his institute will be at a growing disadvantage
against laboratories in the West: “We need
funds dozens of times more than we have
now.” There’s a risk that the institute may just
“drop out,” Bezrukov says. His own pay will
be reduced by the salary changes; he notes that
“all of our active researchers have found themselves
in the same situation.”
–ANDREY ALLAKHVERDOV AND
VLADIMIR POKROVSKY
Andrey Allakhverdov and Vladimir Pokrovsky are writers
in Moscow.

9 JUNE 2006 VOL 312 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org