Эдийн засгийн их сургууль (HSE University)

HSE University (Russian: «Высшая школа экономики», ВШЭ), officially the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Russian: Национальный исследовательский университет «Высшая школа экономики»), is a public research university founded in 1992 and headquartered in Moscow, Russia. Alongside its main campus in the capital, the university operates three regional campuses, in Saint Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Perm, as well as an online campus. The Lyceum at HSE University, also in Moscow, is affiliated with the institution.

HSE was the first educational institution in Russia to successfully introduce bachelor's and master's degrees, and it also took part in developing and implementing the Unified State Exam as part of the modernization of Russia's education and health care systems.

HSE offers education at every level, from a lyceum for secondary school students to postgraduate and MBA programs. Students can pursue training in a range of fields, including the social sciences, economics, the humanities, law, engineering, computer science, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and biotechnology, as well as in creative disciplines. University representatives also sit on the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation and the Expert Council under the government of Russia.

Administration

HSE University was established on 27 November 1992 by a decree from the Russian government. Since then, the university has been administered by a permanent rector, Yaroslav Kuzminov, who also participated in the founding of the university.

In July 2021, Yaroslav Kuzminov resigned. Nikita Anisimov became the new rector. Kuzminov was elected to the post of Academic Supervisor, which Yevgeny Yasin left for health reasons.

Prior to that, the former Minister of Economics Yevgeny Yasin had held the position of Academic Supervisor and represented the university in other academic organizations,, and University President Alexander Shokhin represented it in its interactions with governmental bodies. Economists Vadim Radaev, Lev Yakobson, and Alexander Shamrin have filled the positions of vice-rectors at HSE.

Members of various university councils include Russian politician Sergey Kiriyenko, Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, the founder of "Sberbank" Herman Gref, the president of Renova Group Viktor Vekselberg, Russian billionaire technology entrepreneur Arkady Volozh, chairman of the management board of Otkritie FC Bank Mikhail Mikhailovich Zadornov, a major shareholder of the Russian gas company Novatek Leonid Mikhelson, philanthropist Vadim Moshkovich, as well as the businessman and political activist Mikhail Prokhorov.

History

Prerequisites for establishment

At the beginning of the 1990s, the state of education in the fields of economics and social science was poorly developed in Russian universities. One of the main causes of this state of affairs was the legacy of the communist system, a system that had led to the exile of many intellectuals, the absence of which would later end up limiting advancement in several academic fields of research. The transition from a centrally based economy to a market economy started in the USSR in the 1980s. Consequently, in 1992, Gaidar's government initiated a number of reforms that drastically increased the need for specialists familiar with the contemporary world economy to conduct analysis and run predictions. In 1992, the government enacted a law authorizing the creation of private universities. At that time, in Russia, 33 state universities specialized in sociology and economy. Reforming the existing conservative universities, including the Moscow State University, seemed like an ineffective solution. Thus, the government approved the idea to establish a new university with research priorities in socio-economic sciences.

At the beginning of the 1990s, we understood that the absence of Russian economic school and Russian financial education is a strategic problem for the country <...>. It was almost impossible to create such a system based on existing economic universities, thus, as it also happened to the Institute for the Economy in Transition period, the Higher School of Economics started from scratch.

Establishment and formation

In many ways, HSE University was founded by the efforts of Yaroslav Kuzminov and Yevgeny Yasin. By the beginning of the 1990s, both of them taught economics at the Moscow State University wherein 1989 Kuzminov founded "alternative" (or non-communist) Department of Economics sponsored by the Soros Foundation. In 1991, together with economists Oleg Ananin and Rustem Nureev, Kuzminov and Yasin prepared a grant application for the European Union. The proposed project was drawn up for 100 million euro that aimed to provide "technical assistance in the field of economic education". The proposed project included about 30 projects, including the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy.

HSE University was initially planned as a think tank for officials. It was supposed to promote reforms in Russia, to train economists, analysts, and teachers who would be able to work in the new conditions for the new government.

On 27 November 1992, Gaidar signed the government decree "On creation of the Higher School of Economics" (it was his last decree as the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation). HSE founders noted that they intentionally avoided the term "university" and instead choose "school" referring to the London School of Economics. The European Union and the Government of France immediately sponsored the project. Therefore, HSE University sent its scholars to study in the Netherlands and invited professors from the Sorbonne University and Erasmus Programme.

Campuses

Nizhny Novgorod

The first regional campus was opened in Nizhny Novgorod in 1996. As of 2018, the campus had a population of 2700 students and 320 faculty. In terms of quality of budgetary admission, it ranks first among the universities in Nizhny Novgorod and takes the 19th position in the Russian ratings on the quality of education.

Saint Petersburg

The campus in Saint Petersburg was founded in 1997. As of 2018, the university in Saint Petersburg ranked third among the socio-economic universities of Russia and second in the city by rating of the average USE admission score of its entrants. As of 2019, the campus has a population of 5500 students and 485 faculty.

Perm

The third regional campus in Perm was also established in 1997. As of 2018, the university had around 2000 students and 120 faculty, and was rated 29th position in the Russian ranking on the quality of enrollment. In 2017, the Bachelor's program "Business informatics" took the fourth position in the same ranking). The campus collaborates with University of Essex and University of Évry Val d'Essonne to offer joint double-degrees with these institutions.

Budget and real estate

In 2018, the university income amounted to 17.76 billion rubles (as of January 2020 this amounts to approximately 259,405,579 euros). The main sources of financing are state funds, private education services, fundamental and applied research, grants, donations, and others support.

Applied research commissioned by government agencies, private companies or international organizations constitute up to 40% of the university's income. Among regular clients are the Ministry of Education, the Moscow Department of Information Technology, the Ministry of Economic Development, Rosneft, Aeroflot, Gazprom, Russian Railways. In one academic year, the university completes on average around 300 projects. Other sources of support come from state subsidies and scientific grants, including international programs. For instance, for the Russian Academic Excellence Project alone, the state granted 950 million rubles (as of January 2020, this amounts to approximately 13,874,037 euro).

In 2007, HSE University co-founders established the HSE financial endowment – the nonprofit organization that accepts donations on behalf of the university and invests the received funds. The profit goes to the development of university projects. As of December 2018, the size of the endowment fund was 742.5 million rubles (as of January 2020, this amounts to approximately 10,845,942 euros).

Activity

Education

In 1996, the Higher School of Economics received the status of a State university. Along with the focus on economics, the university emphasized mathematics. By 1999, the Faculty of Law, School of Public Administration, Schools of Political and Social Science had been launched. In 2002, in addition to already existing faculties, the university initiated programs focusing on business and political journalism, psychology, and business informatics.With government support, in 1996–1998 HSE opened new campuses in Russian regions. The first was opened in Nizhny Novgorod, then followed by campuses in Perm and St. Petersburg.

Initially, the university specialized in Economics, Management, and the Social and Human Sciences. Its oldest faculty is the Faculty of Economic Sciences. However, it later began to focus on Mathematics and Information Technology Programs. In 2017, HSE University launched degrees in Physics and Engineering Sciences, and even announced plans to open experimental laboratories at the institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences. At the same time, the university launched the program "Data culture" aimed at the gradual implementation of digital literacy courses in all departmental units.

In 1999, HSE University divided the academic year into five modules instead of semesters. However, later, the university administration decided to reduce the number of modules to four. Starting from 1997, most of the exams have taken place in written form, while all the major student works are checked with plagiarism detection software.

Together with the modular system, the university introduced the «major/minor» education system, which means that students take main disciplines as their "major" and choose the block of additional programs subjected to individual choice as "minors". Altogether, this frees up time for students to prepare for seminars and individual projects. Assessment is carried out in accordance with the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System. Correspondingly, every student has an individual GPA-based ranking that illustrates not only the academic performance, but also affects the size of the scholarship, gives a discount on tuition fees and the opportunity to participate in foreign internships, learn additional languages at the university and much more. Only 8% of students continue education in foreign universities, while 9% of all students came from abroad or participated in exchange programs. The university collaborates with more than 500 partner universities, mainly from Europe and Asia. As for 2019, HSE University had 50 double degree programs with Humboldt University of Berlin, Erasmus University Rotterdam, University of Leeds, London School of Economics, ESCP Europe, and other universities.

Controversy

Despite its proximity to the government, the Higher School of Economics has repeatedly become the target of politically charged criticism. In 2014, at the United Russia congress, the university was called a "snake’s nest". Meanwhile, journalist Vladimir Solovyov spoke about HSE: "They are absolutely openly inciting things here, de facto preparing such a Maidan underground and are that very fifth column."

HSE has repeatedly appeared in political news. For example, in 2009, after a Dissenters' March, HSE management received a demand from the Moscow police to expel students and fire lecturers who participated in the march. The university refused, noting that "they are not prohibited from engaging in politics." In March 2011, a debate took place at HSE between Alexei Navalny and Yaroslav Kuzminov about the "public procurement law" 94-FZ in the presence of representatives of the Ministry of Economic Development.

In 2013, on the Moscow campus of the Higher School of Economics, searches were carried out at the department of the presidential adviser on human rights, Mikhail Fedotov, who participated in the examination of the second criminal case of YUKOS. At the beginning of 2014, the government delayed the consideration of Yaroslav Kuzminov’s candidacy for the position of rector, but in the end the contract was extended for another five years.

In 2018, Dmitry Peskov was invited to the university program "To the Point", but his speech remained unpublished. A transcript of the speech quickly became available on the BBC website. The students sent an open letter to the dean, referring to this incident as censorship that should not be tolerated in the journalism department. As a result, the Media Department issued a public apology to the students. The "To the Point" program received renewed media attention in May 2019, when Moscow City Duma candidate Lyubov Sobol spoke out about how the program was cancelled after she was invited to appear on air. Rector Yaroslav Kuzminov publicly commented on this decision, stating the non-political position of the university. Specialists who conducted political research began to leave the university. The Higher School of Economics has published an order to merge the Department of Political Science of the Faculty of Social Sciences with the Department of State and Municipal Administration into a new Department of Politics and Management from 1 September 2019.

In 2020, several teachers were fired from the university, including Yelena Lukyanova, Alexander Kynev, Kirill Martynov, and others. It is believed that the reason for their firing was their public criticism of that year's amendments to the Russian Constitution. Some of those fired filed a lawsuit demanding 550,000 rubles as compensation for moral damage, but the Basmanny Court of Moscow refused. In February 2021, the Higher School of Economics terminated the contract with guest teacher Anna Vellikok; the official reason for the termination was inability to conduct classes as scheduled due to her arrest for retweeting information about an uncoordinated rally on 23 January 2021. Despite a letter to management from former colleagues at the Faculty of Computer Science, Vellikok was not reinstated in her position, and the termination of the contract was not seen as "neither political persecution nor a violation of the employee's labor rights."

People

Faculty

Initially, HSE applied for grants to invite foreign scholars who, especially at the beginning of the university's history, had more expertise than local specialists. As of 2016, around 11% of the overall number of foreign specialists were professors with a PhD degree.

Due to collaborations with the Ministry of Economic Development, the university invited ministers of economics and politicians to teach classes and give lectures. In the 1990s, the average age of lecturers was 33 years old, by 2011 the number increased to 43 years old. Most of the young scholars came from the Russian Academy of Science and the Moscow State University. HSE has a competitive system for searching for specialists. In the 1990s, due to a generally low salary, most of the professors had several jobs. Thus, HSE University introduced the "effective contract" – a financial system to encourage professors to consider the Higher School of Economics as a primary workplace. Those who have worked at the university for a long time are granted a status of "honoured professor".

Эх сурвалж: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)