From June, 30th to July, 2nd the 5-100 Project Office has held the first International conference on initiatives of academic excellence in Saint Petersburg. The intensive program of the event included discussion of strategies of university’s promotion up to the world level. Representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science of the RF, responsible for the realization of such initiatives in foreign countries, heads of the International Observatory on academic ranking and excellence (IREG), rectors of Russian and foreign universities took part in the conference.
The program committee of the conference was supervised by the Deputy Chairperson of the 5-100 Project Office Council Andrey Volkov and the international expert in education, former coordinator of the program on higher education of the World Bank Jamil Salmi.
The experts discussed the most relevant questions on topics: management models and the role of the state, methods of efficiency evaluation and financial distribution between universities. As the Deputy Minister of Education and Science of the RF Alexander Povalko said at the opening, the main task of the conference is to tell openly and fully about existing approaches to the realization of such initiatives.
At the plenary session Jamil Salmi highlighted that the government, supplying some universities with additional resources such as enhanced financing, gives them an opportunity to develop at a growing rate. The speaker also pointed out the problems which universities face. For example, which criteria are considered to call the university “excellent” and how to determine that the university shows good results due to the incorporation of the “excellence” program.
Vice-president of the IREG International expert group on ranking Valdemar Sivinsky pointed out that taking solutions about further development of higher education system should not be based only on rankings – there the initiatives of project offices and the colleagues’ experience in this question are more important.
During the conference foreign experts spoke about the peculiarities of forming of academic excellence initiatives in other countries. The point of view of administrative structures has been explained by the representatives of Germany, France, Japan, Spain and Canada. For example, the Head of the Department of Higher Education and the Excellence Initiative in Germany Sabine Behrenbeck and the Head of the Program on implementation of the excellence initiative of the French National Research Agency (ANR) Farid Ouabdesselam highlighted the maximum university autonomy, while the presentation of the representative of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Toshio Kuraki was focused on the scientific element of the universities: the stimulation of interdisciplinary research and their active internationalization.
Andrey Volkov was speaking about the Russian way of evolution of academic programs of excellence. The speaker pointed out the main result of the 5-100 Project: “A real discussion about the future of Russian universities has started in the universities among professors, administrative staff and students. We see the mobilization of the whole branch.”
On July, 1st M.N. Strikhanov made a report at the final meeting of project initiative offices. He was speaking about the Development Program 5-100, realized since 2013, mentioning achieved results and examples of successful practices and projects of the University. He said that raising of the number of conferences held in the University had immediately influenced the University promotion in the Webometrics ranking.
MEPhI rector accentuated global changes, in particular, the diversification of scientific-educational activity. Aiming at the technical directions of research, MEPhI is getting the status of the university of science and technologies.
All the representatives of Project offices have acknowledged the conference as useful for experience exchange and future cooperation.
