According to the results of QS subject ranking published on March 22, 2023, St. Petersburg Mining University is in the top three universities in the world in the field of "Mining and Mining Engineering". Not a single Russian institution of higher education has managed to achieve anything like this before. Forpost asked the rector Vladimir Litvinenko to comment on this, without exaggeration, historic achievement and tell how he sees the future of domestic higher education in the context of Russia's rejection of the two-tier system of education.
- Vladimir Stefanovich, if we are talking about personnel training, what decisions, in your opinion, given Vladimir Putin's recent proposal to abandon the bachelor's degree and return to the traditional model of higher education for our country, should help increase the qualifications of graduates?
Vladimir Litvinenko: The most important thing is that the training level of engineering graduates should correspond to the market needs and they should be able to adapt to production as fast as possible. After all, it is no exaggeration to say that applying the knowledge and skills acquired on the student's bench in practice, in the industries that are cornerstones of Russia's socio-economic development, is their mission.
The strategic approach to university development in the field of education should be the transition to the training of mining engineers within 5-6 years depending on the curriculum. Four years should be allocated for mastering the general and basic engineering disciplines mandatory for all, as well as the full cycle of disciplines in the field of training. Then, if you wish, you can defend a diploma project and get a diploma or continue training (in this case the diploma project after four years of training is not required to defend), moving on to the stage of specialization, which lasts 1-2 years. According to its results the student will acquire a qualification in a particular specialty. For example, "drilling wells". This will be considered a full higher technical education. The general education program in its scope and content should be unified. The same applies to the general engineering disciplines and to the disciplines in a particular field of training.
Theoretical knowledge should be undoubtedly reinforced in educational laboratories and at specialized testing grounds (up to 10% of all curricula should be allocated for this), experience gained at real production sites, as well as additional professional competencies. A graduate should necessarily know a foreign language, be able to work with computer modeling and analysis systems, understand the technological chain of the enterprise where he/she plans to build a further career, its economy, and so on. In total, during the training period he/she must acquire up to 12 such competencies.
The university's task is to train broadly educated young specialists who possess modern technical knowledge, are able to think outside the box, and are not afraid to take responsibility. Such engineers are exactly what our country needs, without them no progress will be possible.
It is also extremely important to create conditions for obtaining a second higher education through a system of retraining not less than 350 hours, which works in parallel with the basic training programs. It ends with the defense of a diploma project, which takes place after the defense of the main diploma. Another urgent task is to preserve the master's program as an additional scientific and educational direction with two years of training and the final defense of the graduation thesis. It is important because it will allow to develop academic mobility and accept foreign citizens from the countries participating in the Bologna process. But the master's program should be designed for no more than 10% of the total number of students.
- In your opinion, is scientific activity an obligatory function of a university?
Vladimir Litvinenko: The mission of any higher education institution is to become a center of science, education, and culture. A university cannot be called a university if it does not have a scientific environment, a laboratory base, no staff scientists who are able to conduct experiments using modern technology, generate new reliable knowledge, and consolidate talented young people around them.
Each of our research centers, and we have six of them, is currently conducting serious research in 12-15 areas that are important for the mining and oil and gas industry. The goal of this research is to increase the efficiency of domestic raw material resources for the benefit of our society's development. But they are also an integral part of the educational process. Our task is to clearly demonstrate to students that science is interesting.
As for cooperation between science and business, of course, the commercialization of the results of research activities, the introduction into production of innovative products obtained in laboratories and pilot plants, with the participation of scientists and the university in the authorized capital of these startups is one of the priority tasks of the state. The same applies to the performance of engineering and business contract work with enterprises and companies on the profile of the university's laboratories.
Grants for specific projects to graduate students or professors remain the most important tool for motivating scientific and pedagogical staff. The main thing is that their result is not only the publication of an article, which represents the language of the scientist, but also the generation of new knowledge obtained in the course of experiments. Moreover, this is a prerequisite. The implementation of scientific grants, if they do not involve experiments, is categorically unacceptable.
Russia's withdrawal from the Bologna process
- What problems do you think hinder the development of science and education in our country?
Vladimir Litvinenko: There are plenty of problems, of course, but I would single out the human factor, which often hinders sustainable development much more than the lack of necessary investments or any other factors. Let's face it: a significant part of employees in very many teams, hiding behind various rules and instructions, avoid participation in the process of knowledge generation, higher category staff training, solution of all those tasks which face the higher school.
Instead of thinking, engaging in scientific creativity, working for the real result, they remain in the comfort zone, justifying their inertia by the fact that no instructions are sent down from above on this or that account. Such people do not want to learn throughout life, constantly improve the level of their competencies, and prefer to be guided by some corporate standards, the implementation of which eliminates the possibility of employee initiative, generates additional bureaucratic procedures and in general is an obvious brake on the development of the university. This is because it replaces the fundamental laws that regulate an employee's attitude toward his or her responsibilities.
Positive scientific and educational environment can be created only if it is based on a certain freedom of action, increasing personal responsibility, the ability of each person to make decisions and be responsible for their effectiveness within the established rules of internal order. The progress of higher education institution in this context should be built on increasing the role of the individual, who seeks to grow above himself professionally and is ready to do everything possible to achieve the team result.
- Let's return to your success with the QS rankings. First, let's decide which rankings are more weighty: the global or the subject rankings?
Vladimir Litvinenko: Global rankings rank universities in a wide range of fields. Technical and humanitarian, medical and theatrical. Their comparison will be adequate only if one university has a comfortable scientific and educational environment, while the other is in decline. If the level of infrastructure is approximately the same, then any, the most objective gradation will still be incorrect. It can be likened to trying to find an answer to the question of who is better and more necessary for the country: a mining engineer, an economist, a doctor, or a teacher?
Obviously, all these specialists are demanded by society, but the process of their training is fundamentally different, which means that the tasks faced by specialized institutions of higher education do not always coincide. For example, humanities universities do not, a priori, need to invest as much money in upgrading their equipment and laboratory facilities as technical universities do.
That is why for us the measure of the level of development of the Mining University, a kind of mirror that reflects our successes and achievements, has always been the subject rankings in which specialized universities compete. This is the real competitive environment that has always been and will always be the engine of progress. The opinion of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), the world's most respected agency, is especially important to us because it is based on their reputation among employers and in the academic community when compiling a list of the world's best universities.
- Mining University began ranking in the QS subject rankings seven years ago and has been consistently ranked among the top 20 universities in the world in its field of study ever since. How do you manage to achieve such a high result and, most importantly, make constant progress? After all, last year, for example, the university was in seventh place, and this year it is already in the top three...
Vladimir Litvinenko: The level of humanization of society and the ability of a state to develop the economy is determined primarily by the presence of the conglomerate of science, education and culture. Without their development, a country will inevitably turn into a colony, partly due to its inability to create innovative technologies.
St. Petersburg Mining University, and this is an objective reality, has created such a scientific, educational and social environment, which allows solving the problem of training personnel for mining and oil and gas companies on a modern technological level, as well as generating new knowledge. The development of our unique resource potential without these two components is simply impossible.
Russia is a country of raw materials. The presence of practically the entire Mendeleev Table in its subsoil is one of our undoubted competitive advantages. But in order to monetize natural capital, turn it into natural, social and human capital, we need competent engineers and scientists. Their intellectual potential is another of our competitive advantages, and its development is the most important state task. Feedback from employers and the academic community, monitored annually by QS experts, suggests that the development strategy of St. Petersburg Mining University is aimed at its solution and allows us to achieve certain results in this area.