We’ve Been Successful on a National Level, but the Global Market Sets the Bar Much Higher

Yaroslav Kuzminov

HSE is beginning its 21st year and it promises to be an eventful one. The university needs to make another leap forward and improve its international competitiveness significantly. Here is Rector Yaroslav Kuzminov’s beginning of term address.

Dear colleagues, teachers, researchers, students and postgraduates of the HSE!

To begin our 21st year I’d like to wish you all energy, confidence in your strengths and pleasure from work and study.

We have just been declared one of the winners of the competition for leading HEIs who will receive extra resources from the government to raise our international rating. This means that in the short space of 7 years we have to, at least in some respects, get on a par with the world’s leading universities - Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and the LSE. We aspire to recognition as a fully-fledged player in the global academic community, as a centre of key research and a place to further education.

It is a colossal task but no greater in scale than building the HSE in the first place.  

In less than 20 years, we have created one of Russia’s leading universities. We managed it because we weren’t afraid of huge challenges or to face our weaknesses and work hard to overcome them. We weren’t afraid to change. 

And now, once again, we have to make major changes to our structure and our work. We’ve been successful on a national level, but the global market sets the bar much higher.

Our teachers and researchers have to be viable in the international research community - to publish in international journals and present research results that gain recognition abroad.

Our students must be much more involved in research and practical professional work than they are at the moment, and it goes without saying that all HSE graduates are expected to be in fluent foreign languages and business communication and presentation skills.

There needs to be a qualitative change in our infrastructure. Teachers and researchers will have their own offices and laboratories and active students will get space for their projects and research work. We are working on solving the problems of inadequate space and buildings and also on making the HSE less dispersed both physically and virtually. We will have more online participation in lectures and seminars and reorganise to use models for teaching in several different cities simultaneously.   

I’ll be telling you about my ideas for our plans and changes in the near future and I look forward to a serious and interesting discussion.

In the meantime, I wish you all success and good luck!

Yaroslav Kuzminov, HSE Rector