Almost every second Muscovite under 30 is currently studying. After graduating from the university, he enters graduate school, or MBA courses, or goes to receive a second higher or additional professional education. And this is not to mention the boom in master classes and public lectures, where they talk about everything in the world - from nuclear physics to molecular cuisine.
The craving for knowledge is satisfied mainly by indie schools. This is a rather desperate general term: it also means the Britanki consortium, which trains the “proletariat of the creative industries”; and the Strelka Institute, where urbanists are nurtured - creators and visionaries; and the Russian School of Economics - a forge of "white collars"; and the Independent Moscow University, full of gifted mathematicians. The Village's editor-in-chief Artyom Efimov looked into how indie schools work and how they can help renew traditional Russian higher education.
Crisis of higher education
More than half of Russian universities are state-owned. The rest of the state licenses and accredits by specialty. Everyone knows that at Moscow State University or at HSE they teach better than at other universities. But formally, the diplomas of the giant universities are equivalent to any other. Only in 2010 did the status of a “national research university” appear - it was assigned, in particular, to the same HSE, Baumanka, MGSU, MISiS, MEPhI, MIPT, MAI, MPEI, the Institute of Oil and Gas. And this is not to mention Moscow State University and St. Petersburg State University, whose special status is even prescribed in the law "On Education".
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A diploma, as a rule, is not decisive in a graduate's career. For example, only one out of 20 graduates of Moscow universities works in their specialty. The education of each public-sector student (about 40% of them) costs taxpayers about 150-200 thousand rubles a year. If, for example, a person with an art history degree works as a journalist, this money is probably not completely wasted: after all, a good liberal arts training in journalistic work will come in handy. But when, say, a certified civil engineer sells cell phones, this means that either he went to study, not quite understanding what and why, or he was taught the wrong way and the wrong way for employers. In any case, this is a failure of the education system and a waste of public money. When people enter a university, they are not always interested in new knowledge. A slope from the army and a hostel in Moscow often motivate much more. The craving for knowledge and the desire to learn a new profession usually wakes up later, when one higher education and some work experience already exist. Additional vocational and second higher education, as a rule, cost money, and this is a completely different story. “In Russia, if there is a choice - to invest in education or in a new car, a person will most likely choose a car,” says Ekaterina Cherkes-zade, director of the Scream School of computer graphics and the Moscow Film School. - And even if he paid for education, |
Russians have universities located students are learning proportion of students On average in rubles the cost of training each state student to Russian taxpayers |
it seems to him that it is possible not to strain further. Paid education is discredited by state universities with state-funded places and unscrupulous private universities that actually sell a diploma without knowledge.”
What is DPO
The fashion for additional education was greatly facilitated by the economic crisis: many industries collapsed, and people had to master new professions en masse. Supply follows demand: private school leaders confirm that education is becoming a fashionable business. For the domestic mentality, this, of course, sounds blasphemous.
Since 2012, programs of additional professional education (AVE), with the exception of specific areas such as civil service, pedagogy or private security activities, are not subject to state accreditation. This means that the school itself, and not on the basis of educational standards imposed by the state, can determine what and how to teach its students. Graduates do not receive a state diploma, but their own school diploma, the value of which is determined solely by the reputation of the educational institution. It is expected that over time a system of accreditation of CPE by professional communities will appear.
The refusal of the state to regulate the CVE system forces schools to compete with brands, quality and cost of education. The effectiveness of additional education is determined by how it meets the requirements of the relevant industry, and the authority of the school in the industry. Accordingly, schools that simply stamped state diplomas, collecting money for this under the guise of tuition fees, in theory, should go down the drain: getting an FPO “for the sake of a crust” is now, in general, pointless.
The rector of the New Economic School, Sergei Guriev, recalls that his school “existed quite successfully without accreditation for the first 13 years, and the European University at St. Petersburg even longer.” According to Guriev, "a really serious distorting factor" in the competition for applicants is the army draft. The Vice-Rector for Science at the Independent Moscow University, Mikhail Tsfasman, when answering a question about the costs of independence, also first of all recalls the absence of a delay.
Creative professions
The British Higher School of Design attracts many applicants with an expensive but prestigious British higher education and a diploma from the University of Hertfordshire. The MARCH School of Architecture, opened this year by renowned architect Yevgeny Ass, who left the Moscow Architectural Institute as too rigid, also offers a master's program developed in conjunction with the Department of Architecture and Spatial Design of the London Metropolitan University, and a British degree at the exit.
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A British diploma on its own, and even complete with a portfolio, does not guarantee anything to graduates of the Russian “Britanka” who have decided to make a career in the West: there is enough “creative proletariat” there. However, the Russians also have their own advantage - a fresh look, notes the director of the Scream School and the Moscow Film School Ekaterina Cherkes-zade. In the domestic market, a British diploma is, of course, a very prestigious crust.
By Russian standards, all schools of the Britanki consortium are institutions of additional professional education. Ekaterina Cherkes-zade explains that this status gives the greatest freedom: “Many of the professions that we teach at Scream School are simply not in any registers, so they can only be taught as part of additional education. In addition, no educational standards will keep pace with the development of computer graphics.” For educational programs to remain effective and in demand by the industry, they need to be constantly reviewed.
However, according to Cherkeszade, in the creative industries no one looks at a diploma - they look at a portfolio. They put maximum effort into it in the consortium "British".
Freedom and independence
CVE schools often appear as small training workshops for companies that are faced with a shortage of personnel and decide to train the right specialists for themselves. In this case, everything is simple with educational standards: suitable for the needs of a particular company means a good education. Accordingly, this company finances the school, so it does not have to earn money on its own.
The indie school is different in that it does not serve a specific company, but the industry as a whole. It should be, as they say, equidistant from all market players. Accordingly, she cannot afford to be financially dependent on any one sponsor, and ideally she should earn money on her own.
However, such a school depends on the market and is forced to limit its own creative search in favor of its requirements. Thus the concept of freedom suddenly comes into conflict with the concept of independence. Freedom is also the right to make a mistake: for example, an expensive study with an unobvious result. When a school is a commercial enterprise, it can hardly afford it.
Institute of Media, Architecture
and design "Arrow"
Founded in 2009
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For example, Strelka Institute of Design, Media and Architecture cannot be considered independent in the sense that Britanka is independent. Strelka depends on money mainly from two sponsors - Alexander Mamut and Sergey Adoniev. Education at Strelka is free, and income from the bar and from commercial activities (consulting) is enough to cover only a small part of the costs. “It was originally a philanthropic project,” Ekaterina Girshina, director of open programs at Strelka, readily admits.
But Strelka, of course, is freer in choosing what and how to teach: it trains not strong professionals for specific industries, like the Britanka consortium, but creators and visionaries. “We have a mission: to change the landscape - physical and metaphysical,” says Strelka director Varvara Melnikova. - We must train people who will become leaders of change, primarily in urban planning. Such people should work in government, in public organizations, in business, in creative fields.”
Business education
From the mid-2000s until very recently, there was a boom in MBA (Master of Business Administration) programs in Russia - intensive case-study business schools for middle and top managers. From 2004 to 2012, these programs were subject to state accreditation as additional professional education.
Founded in 1991
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Vladimir Arnold, Nikolai Konstantinov and other founders of the Independent Moscow University, remarkable scientists and teachers, left the Mekhmat of Moscow State University more than twenty years ago to teach mathematics without regard to standards and methods that they considered outdated. NMU accepts students without exams, they don't even require a certificate. There is no class schedule as such either: they post the class schedule - and the student himself decides where to go. At the seminars, everyone is given the same tasks and encourages discussion of the solution.
Every year more than 200 people enter the NMU. Of these, four or five survive to graduate. NMU does not take money for training and exists solely on donations. The list of his sponsors includes the Dynasty Foundation, Yandex, the Soros Open Society Institute, and even the French Embassy. “For twenty years, NMU has not collapsed,” Vice-Rector for Science Mikhail Tsfasman comments on this funding model, “which means it is more stable than democracy in Russia.” At the same time, Tsfasman admits that it would be better for the university to take money from the state, “especially if it was stable funding, not particularly burdened with conditions.”
Where to grow
“I responsibly assert that independence does not bring any formal advantages [to non-state universities] today,” says NES Rector Sergey Guriev. He notes that in recent times, public universities, especially national research universities and federal universities, have received the same academic and managerial freedom as independent ones. At the same time, state universities have guaranteed (even if chronically insufficient) funding and facilities.
“In non-state universities there is a clear understanding of what their mission is - why they were created and why society needs them,” Guriev explains the main advantage of indie education and adds: “In principle, young state universities are arranged this way - like the Higher School of Economics, and young faculties in them - like a number of faculties of the Academy of National Economy.
Guriev is sure that in the near future the first indie universities will appear in Russia, created from above, that is, as a result of the transfer of real power over the state university to the board of trustees.
Higher education throughout its history throughout the world has invariably developed from elite to mass, public. Everything else is a struggle for quality and choice of path: whether education should be state, public or private. In Russia, and above all in Moscow, next to the traditional state, a private and even a little public higher school began to hatch. It is they who, as far as possible, satisfy the demand, while the state is puzzling over the next reform.
Polina's answer describes the realities of the Russian bureaucracy to a greater extent than the historically established rules for naming scientific organizations. Everything is simple.
Institute (lat. institution- establishment, custom, institution) - any organization engaged in any activity. The President of Russia is an institution. The press is an institution. State Astronomical Institute. Sternberg (scientific organization) is also an institute. And even the Moscow Aviation Institute (an educational organization) is a real institute. Almost all educational institutions in Russia are subordinate to the Ministry of Education and Science and are directly controlled by it.
University (lat. university- set, community) - a complex that combines philosophers, scientists of various specialties and their students. Universities are usually independent and self-governing, often closed to police and government officials. Often, universities that are not located in large cities become "city-forming enterprises". In the city of Heidelberg, where I now live, there are 30 thousand university students per 150,000 population. Usually, it is universities that award doctoral degrees (in Russia, until recently, this was done by a special body of the Ministry of Education and Science), while institutes can be bases for the direct work of scientists, for example, a university graduate student is also an employee of the institute.
Therefore, students of real, historically established universities often do not like to be asked how things are in the "institute". A university is more than an institute. But the bureaucratization of Russian education and its accountability to the Ministry of Education instead of the independence of universities deprive universities of the status that universities usually have in other countries. For example, Academician Sadovnichiy sold the independence of the university to Putin in order to stay longer as the rector of the university - now the president appoints the rector of Moscow State University, and not the academic council.
Academy (from Greek Ἀκαδήμεια) - scientific community, club. Usually associated with a group of scientific institutions, the best scientists of which are accepted into the academy and receive the corresponding academic status from other academicians. Academies often publish scientific journals and can be an expert community. Some academies also conduct educational activities. At the same time, in principle, anyone can found an academy, but such academicians will be ridiculed (see RANS). Until recently, the Russian Academy of Sciences directly controlled most of the scientific organizations in Russia, but after the 2013 reform, it lost this opportunity, and the institutes began to be managed by FASO officials.
Academician Sadovnichiy did not sell anything - he only paid interest for the use of other people's property. Imperial Moscow University originally belonged to the state and was created for its, the state, goals, and not for the sake of some kind of research and science
The independent Moscow University was founded ten years ago in the wake of an attempt to do something about mathematics education.It was clear that the Soviet system of education lacked a lot, and, not having the strength and ability to reform the very inertial existing structures, a group of leading mathematicians of the country and the world waved their hand at these structures and said that they had to do their own, very small, but the most worthy level.
And so it happened, the university is terribly small. We have two faculties, the main one is mathematics, and the second is very close to mathematics.
From the very beginning, the university is independent in every sense, including, unfortunately, from money - from state funding for sure.
There was a period in its history when professors paid for the right to teach with us. Ten years ago, when he first appeared, classes were held in the evenings in the building of one of the mathematical schools in Moscow, the 2nd school. They let the university go there for nothing, but you had to pay for electricity, and the professors chipped in. Now the situation is a little better: we do not charge anything from professors, and we pay students a scholarship, thanks to some international funds.
We are very grateful to these funds, but they give little, and it is terribly hard to exist.
Our second benefactor is the city, which at a certain moment gave us a very nice four-story unfinished house in the Arbat lanes. In this building, the Independent coexists with another amazing institution - the Center for Continuing Mathematical Education, our official founder (which, in turn, was initiated by the Independent University). They are mainly engaged in schools, olympiads, mathematical schools, advanced training of teachers, and we are mainly engaged in higher education.
The lack of administrative capacity has led to the fact that education is evening (since we do not give a deferment from the army).
In general, the paperwork is tight, even obtaining a license was given with great difficulty, we do not have state accreditation, that is, our non-state diploma. This diploma is recognized very well in the leading universities and research centers of the world, in our country it is recognized de facto in two or three academic institutions that have strong mathematical laboratories.
Students mostly study somewhere else during the day, and most of them are at the Mechanics and Mathematics Department of Moscow State University.
Because of the evening and, as it were, optionalness, the dropout is very large, and not because we are persecuting someone.
We accept very easily: we have entrance exams, but they are optional - in fact, they are needed to get a scholarship in the first semester. And so, please, go to lectures, take exams.
True, we take the current exams very harshly, but at the same time we create all the conditions so that a person who has not passed the exam can continue to study.
Despite this, the dropout is such that 60 people come to the first course, and 5 people receive diplomas in five years, i.e. every year the number of students decreases by about half.
It takes four years to pass all the exams, in the fifth year a person writes quite a serious scientific work - a diploma. The diploma work, as a rule, is published in one of the leading journals in the world. Then graduate school for those who wish, a serious exam for graduate school, and attention is paid not only to the ability to solve difficult problems, but also to the breadth of knowledge - we do not train narrow specialists, there are other graduate schools for them.
We teach children who already from the third year themselves begin active scientific work. Since there are very few of them, the main element of learning is personal contact with the teacher, there is an opportunity to mess around with each of them a lot.
The level of the guys we graduate is absolutely amazing, at seminars they think three times faster than I do. In other words, we reproduce the scientific elite in a very narrow sense, in fact, they are not even university professors, these are the people who should train professors. And all of them are actively working scientists of the highest level. This is a major note.
Then again minor. After that, a natural process takes place - two-thirds of them settle in Harvard, Princeton, some in Paris. The remaining third teaches with us and travels all the time to survive. But this is no longer a problem of the university, it is a problem of society.
What we are doing is not higher education as such. Rather, it is a niche between doing science and teaching. Why people come to the Independent is understandable.
Those who want to become exactly a scientist in the field of mathematics come to study. They come to teach because it is always interesting to teach to a person who is very bright, and there are a lot of such students among our students, especially among those who stay after the first year.
Our first year is made up of the strongest students of Moscow State University, and only those who finish their studies ... And our work is pleasant, free and interesting, and human relations are very good.
There are about 50 professors on the staff of the university, for none of whom this place of work is the only one. Many of our professors are somewhere for half a year, and here for half a year. As one of our leading mathematicians said, if a scientist has insufficient patriotism, he goes to America, but if he is a real patriot, then to Western Europe. But I repeat once again: if, when he comes to Moscow for the holidays, he gives a course three times a week, he is no less useful to the university than a permanent professor, and much more than a person who, by hook or by crook, is trying to make money in Russia.
Slowly Nezavisimy becomes the center of Moscow's mathematical life, at least one of its main centers. We have, for example, the all-university interdisciplinary seminar "Globus"; fifty Moscow and visiting mathematicians attend its meetings. Since this year we have been publishing - an international scientific journal, where Russian scientists, once Russian and completely foreign scientists are published.
What we have managed to do in mathematics, I constantly want to do in all other theoretical sciences. I would like to build a real multidisciplinary university around the Independent University, while now it should be called the University of Mathematics, because it is quite universal in mathematics, but nothing more. But it is too late to change the name, it is already known by ear in world mathematical circles. In an effort to bring in other disciplines, we talked to theoretical physicists, to linguists, to other scientists who don't need expensive equipment.
Over the past ten years, various sciences have developed their own traditions of survival. Different sciences suffered different losses, say, our theoretical physics left almost entirely. There were either very elderly people, or people who come for three months. So, at least, physicists told me. And yet it's not that bad. I know several strong physicists who often visit Russia (each of them has a permanent place of work "there"), and a couple of good working seminars where many strong young people go.
Therefore, attempts to expand the university are only partially successful. Recently, we have created a linguistic data center for theoretical linguists, a laboratory for mathematical methods in the natural sciences, and a laboratory for written speech recognition. More ideas, of course.
To complete the story about the Independent University, I must honestly say that its scientific reputation, especially in the international mathematical community, is somewhat exaggerated, in my opinion. It seems to them there that our paradise is eternal and unshakable. And from the inside, I see that his very existence is very fragile, and even Christopher Robin does not know what will happen to him next.
Mikhail Tsfasman
www.strana-oz.ru
It so happened that, having entered the MAI, I thought a little and decided that I did it in vain. And, in order to somehow correct the situation, he decided to transfer to the FIFT MIPT. Well, because why not.
Looking ahead, I will say that the attempt was unsuccessful, and now I am waiting for the summer to go and fail again. However, not everything is so bad, because the incentive to develop appeared, and in the process I met a couple of good people, telling how everything went. And - most importantly - one of them mentioned in a conversation with me NMU. Intrigued, I went to Google ...
NMU- very interesting place. Let's start with the fact that this is a university with classes in the evening(i.e. it is quite possible to come after classes at the main institute), and it does not require admission . You don't need exams, you don't need exams. You just come to lectures. And that's it.
Such freedom is compensated by great complexity: if at the first lectures the number of people went off scale, and there were not enough seats in a huge audience (I wrote while standing at the first 2-3 lectures or sitting somewhere in a corner on the floor / backpack), then by the end of the year there were from the strength of 15-20 people. In the 1st semester, studying Galois theory, Lobachevsky geometry, discrete groups, bundles, we also had category theory, which, as far as I know, is not a small rarity in the general course and is completely unthinkable - in the first semester. In general, the program depends on the teachers, every year it is quite different.
Somewhere I came across an interesting statement that NMU ways to master only HSE students, some students 57 schools and graduate students of Mekhmat and Phystekh ... In any case, I went after the first year, with knowledge of mathematical analysis, algebra, calculus of variations, diffurs, tensor analysis and differential geometry, which gave me a certain plus.
Second: there just math. In the 1st semester there are 3 courses: geometry, algebra, mathematical analysis. In 2 geometry is replaced by topology (general). In general, the university itself is aimed at graduating precisely professional mathematicians, and mathematics is studied there not applied, but theoretical (fundamental). As far as I know, a program of this complexity can only be found in one more place in the country - on Faculty of Mathematics HSE, which, in fact, is based on NMU and was created. But it is worth noting that there is much more communication between students at the Faculty of Mathematics, a kind of mathematical environment, discussion of complex issues, so the level of understanding (and, as a result, learning) is higher there.
Also possible candidates: Mekhmat, Fiztekh. I can’t say for sure, because I didn’t study either there or there.
Third: the university is non-state. That is, there is no accreditation, no state diplomas. There are diplomas of their own, but they, of course, will be accepted in few places. Just in Harvard, Yes. And in matinstitut them. Steklova. It is clear that the value of all this is more for a mathematician than for an IT specialist, so the only thing an IT specialist should go for is a good understanding of mathematics. And, of course, for the achievement.
However, there are exams. Surrendering them is completely optional, because they will let you go to lectures and everything else. They give 3 main pluses: a scholarship (yes, a non-state university has a scholarship!), the ability to use the library and the opportunity to go to in. yaz (French in the first place, like, there is German). Well, again, an achievement. Which you can show off, for example, to teachers of mathematics at the main university, receiving honor and respect.
This stands separately, the word " Independent University"is known to any person in Russia who knows at least something in mathematics, and it is not surprising that the MAI teachers also know him. Usually, behind the mention NMU followed by questions about what is being studied there, and how it is in general. I showed sheets of tasks to one of the teachers, he thought about one task, and after a couple of months (during the exam for him) he announced that he had solved it (I distorted it a little, of course, he hardly thought about it seriously, otherwise he would have decided right away, I think because it is simple). By the way, a little earlier, having found a cat drawn (by me) on the blackboard, he offered to become my supervisor. I promised to think and I still think.
^difur is not mine
What NMU gives in all seriousness, so this is the so-called mathematical intuition. This is when theorems that are not obvious to others are obvious to you, it is easier to solve problems, it is easier to understand and memorize theory ... You can understand the NMU program only in fragments and do only a dozen tasks from a huge number, but this will already take your understanding of mathematics to a new level . At least, that's exactly what I did, however, the TFKT program at MAI went much, much easier compared to the 2nd semester matan program (by the way, I passed the 5th semester without any preparation). And it was not easier for my classmates.
Heller By the way, he also mentions:
I myself sometimes read all sorts of books on applied mathematics in order to have some kind of exhaust from mathematics in the form of cash, and I must say that the study of applied mathematics after starting classes at NMU has become something completely elementary and not complicated that you can read at your leisure without straining your brain.
I probably won’t talk about teachers, because everything is rather subjective. Let me just say that I admire them. Great people, great teachers, great mathematicians. By the way, students are seriously respected, which is priceless.
A little about the leaflet system. The idea, in fact, is this: after each lecture, sheets with tasks that need to be completed are issued. At seminars, as a rule, there is no collective problem solving, instead, students hand in and explain the sheets to the hosts, ask incomprehensible moments, etc. However, there is no strict distribution, for example, according to algebra once the sheet was skipped, and another one was without a lecture. By geometry even before the lectures began, a zero sheet appeared to refresh knowledge (or make sure that they are). Knowledge, by the way, is not at all at the school level (at least not at the secondary school level), requires a good understanding complex numbers, which is not particularly given in our modern schools, if these are not math schools. The first tasks are elementary (like " Prove that when multiplying complex numbers, the arguments are added and the moduli are multiplied."), the latter are rather non-trivial. Well, here is the same sheet, in general:
There is another curious idea that is often encountered: the material that cannot be presented in lectures, transferred to leaflets and offered to prove it yourself. Difficult, yes. But cool.
Apart from NMU, the leaflet system, as far as I know, is used in Moscow State University and HSE.
Often you come across very scary sheets in which you look and understand that you do not understand. You don’t understand at all, despite the lecture you listened to. However, I didn't listen.
In fact, sheets are one of the most important things, problem solving is the only way to master some area of mathematics, and here problems are not in the style of "solve 100 integrals", but very different, of very different complexity, interesting and really good. Checkers are also quite adequate and do not require unnecessary garbage, you can, for example, bring the theorem to some obvious result and not prove it further, because everything is meaningless and clear. Or even come up with something that makes it obvious, and this happens, yes. And just by solving a couple of tasks, you will find that you really have become much clearer, and now you understand the topic, and sometimes even freely.
The atmosphere there is also beautiful, generally met the words that NMU- not a university, but just a club of interests. For example, you understand that there are more than one hundred completely unfamiliar left people sitting here, and you can safely leave your things here, go somewhere and not be afraid that something will disappear somewhere. It's cool, very cool. The people are going to be very different, we talked, there are people who have already graduated from the university, there are schoolchildren, there are students of the Mekhmat, tower, Bauman, mythi, physic. Sometimes it's a rather strange feeling when you discover that you understand something that others do not understand, including those from the Mekhmat and the tower. It is not at all clear how this could be.
There were 3-4 people from the MAI, we talked (besides, somewhere in the middle of the year I called NMU Mayevites, writing to the group, a couple of people wanted to go, but I still don’t know anything about the fate of their decision), but then they stopped going. It was cool to know that one of our teachers graduated from MAI (applied mathematics).
In general, there was an opinion that a large part of all those who study mathematics are going to go to IT, because mathematics in Russia is somehow not very good, alas.
Also this year we have
