National Research Nuclear University “MEPhI” has made a major breakthrough this year, taking the 13th place in the BRICS and emerging economies ranking of universities by the Times Higher Education. MEPhI rector Mikhail Strikhanov told RIA Novosti about how the University was able to achieve it.

- Mikhail Nikolaevich, yesterday the results of a new ranking of universities by Times Higher Education for the BRICS and emerging economies was announced. MEPhI is in it for the first time and immediately took the 13th place. Only MSU has better result among Russian universities. How can you explain this success?

- I think it should be considered as an advance which we’ve received for the future work. Of course, we are very pleased to hold such a high place. It can only be achieved with a recognizable brand of the University, a large number of top-rated publications and good graduates.

We are a very strong University in the BRICS group. And using sports analogy, it is a competition not with a standing partner, but with very actively moving one. We understand that in the future the situation may change. Therefore, we need to develop those strengths that our University has and which are the basis of the MEPhI brand. This triad is: science, education and industrial innovation. Realizing that we must have a strong fundamental science, we must focus on the end product. This feedback leads to a quality education. We train personnel who acquire knowledge of a very high level, and I think it's one of the success secrets.

The second secret is that we are not simply an educational, but scientific and educational center. Our University has always had serious science. We have a huge number of workers fr om different branches of industry, the Russian Academy of Sciences, State Corporation “Rosatom” and Rostec. Students of the third or fourth years are attached to a scientific supervisor and they become focused on participation in specific and very complex project, they are already working in a team.

- And what are your plans for future?

- We have created very ambitious plans and developed a road map for improvement of indicators, which promote MEPhI in the world University rankings. There are very complex tasks, for example, increasing the number of publications per science teachers six fold in eight years. And it couldn’t be solved without quality and comprehensive restructuring of the University work.

Now we change the infrastructure, change the system of people motivation, have a hard personnel policy. We want to bring structure and management of the University closer to the business structure, like it is in the SC “Rosatom”, but we understand the peculiarity of education as a fairly conservative process. We will create services as it is organized in successful corporations, for example, HR department.

And here we have to solve the opposite problems. On the one hand we have a lot of defensive and closed matter tasks, on the other hand – the trend of globalization. This is different trends, but they are successfully solved, for example, in the United States.

Thus, bringing the University structure and manageability closer to the best foreign universities, there is much that we will win. This is the only way.

- What about involvement of foreign teachers and students in the University? It's also a significant indicator affecting the reputation.

- We have a very detailed plan what we should do to attract foreign scientists. By 2020 we plan to have more than 14% of foreigners in personnel. There is also a lot of complexity as well. All the prominent scientists have long-term plans for the coming years, so we are competing, but we are working upon this matter.

As for students, it is quite natural for us niche. We are the main partner University of the SC “Rosatom”, and “Rosatom” has its own interests and plans for the construction of facilities in more than 70 countries around the world. So we go after it, and in places wh ere there is at least the outline of the agreement, we are working on the issue of training. And training is held not only on Russian territory, but on the territory of another country as well. This cooperation with “Rosatom” gives us about a half of foreign students.

Now approximately 6.5% of students are foreigners, and it’s planed to increase this number up to 21%.

- Has MEPhI managed to expand international contacts in the course of BRICS universities summit passing these days in Moscow?

- We had a very good meeting with eight of the strongest Brazilian universities and were amazed by the level of development of the Brazilian education. We managed to establish good contacts, and we hope that it will be an effective resource in future.

- What, in your opinion, are the biggest obstacles for MEPhI and generally all Russian universities to improve their positions in the international arena now?

- For many years our country was closed, so the brands of our universities are less recognizable than American and European. The second major problem is funding. The budget figures are the same with the Americans, but here are rubles, and there are dollars. The level of funding differs at least 30 times. Having such a lag it is hard to compete and this problem cannot be resolved at once. We should prepare for hard work.

In general, the ranking of universities is a very important indicator of a system constitution. If none of the Russian universities is included in the global top-100 or top-200, it means that the education system is sick. And if some universities are able to be among leaders, we should not focus only on them. These are our Olympic Champions, which should be followed by others. The system should catch up with the leaders.

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