For a breakthrough in the economy, science and business of Russia, serious changes are needed in the field of higher education, which will make it possible to prepare flexible specialists for the labor market. Alexei Kudrin, head of the Accounts Chamber, Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences of St. Petersburg State University, wrote about this in a column on RBC.
In his opinion, it will be impossible to achieve success without using international experience. It is about fostering a new type of thinking – critical, free and innovative. All over the world, such pupils are trained according to the Liberal Arts and Science programs, in Russia it is translated as liberal arts and sciences.
Kudrin explained that the creation of a liberal university of liberal arts and sciences would scale up the transformation process. Educational programs built on new principles should allow students to study according to an individual plan and redefine the educational trajectory.
Thanks to the acquired skills, Kudrin is sure, the student will be able to master many different specialties, which means that he will be able to overcome any crisis. This experience has been adopted by leading universities around the world, even in China, several dozen such programs have been created. There are only four of them in Russia, the head of the joint venture noted, adding that the country is lagging behind.
Kudrin heads the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences of St. Petersburg State University. It became known last week that the faculty will soon secede and become an independent university. The politician pointed out that in its current form, he has exhausted his capabilities, since he can no longer recruit teachers due to the limited number of positions.
Earlier, the Accounts Chamber found out that the project to improve the competitiveness of Russian universities, for which 80 billion rubles were allocated over seven years, had failed. The participating universities did not meet the key performance indicators and were not included in the top 100 international rankings.