A sustainable university in challenging circumstances. A case from Russia.

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Several months ago our University, the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences has applied for re-accreditation of its MA and BA programs and did not get a single program accredited. It meant that the Moscow School could no longer grant state diplomas.
This was a shock, because the School previously had been named one of the most successful private universities by the Russian Ministry of Education and Research and was receiving a modest financial support from the state- only 13 private universities were equally privileged. The previous round of accreditation five years ago was smooth and not a single program’s application was unsuccessful. Now the same programs were rejected by state inspection and accreditation body Rosobrnadzor.
The decision was so absurd, that it has been questioned by nearly every HE specialist, let alone all MSSES staff, alumni and students. Fifty rectors of top Russian Universities have signed a letter to the Government, questioning the entire accreditation procedure. The students have launched a campaign for closure of the Rosobrnadzor, the accreditation agency, for incompetence and collected thousands of signatures to their petition..
Moreover, in spite of the fact that MSSES can no longer grant state diplomas, in 2018 it had more MA applicants than ever in its previous history. Many of them, as they were applying, were saying that they wanted to support the institution that they thought was doing extremely good job. One could call it a unique application protest vote.
However, the decision was not totally unexpected: just a year before St.Petersburg European University, another private university known for its liberal values was not only denied accreditation but lost its license and the right to teach. Interestingly enough, in the course of protests against Shaninka’s loss of accreditation the license was returned.
The Moscow School, known as Shaninka, because of its founder Theoror Shanin, was effectively a Russian British institution, as all of its programs have been validated by British Universities, mostly by the University of Manchester, and was following all the British quality assurance rules and regulations. It is a typical niche University. It was established in early 90s, when the teaching of humanities and social sciences in Russian Universities was in deep crisis and has made its mission to produce a new generation of liberally minded well- educated scholars, committed to civil society development.
What makes a University of such kind sustainable in spite of the context in which it is working? High quality programs and faculty? Rigorous quality control?
At this panel we will argue, that while all of the above are important at the start of an enterprise, in the longer term perspective these are the University alumni that make it sustainable. If the alumni have become true emissaries of civil society mission, if they carry on the ideas that their University was standing for, then, even if the institution is closed, it lives on.
Several social projects that we have implemented in Shaninka such as North Caucasus Initiative aiming at crating multicultural school ethos in the schools of North Caucasus have also demonstrated that humanistic ideas and civil society values live as long as the participants of these projects continue working in schools or school administration.
Shaninka was always proud of the careers our alumni were having: in more liberal years they were becoming members of the government ,ministers and heads of important state departments, now they often become leaders of universities and schools, senior staff in national and international NGOs , researchers and college professors. We have asked several of our graduates to talk about their careers and the research that they were doing in hope that its relevance to the Moscow school mission would become obvious. We have asked every panelist to participate in a short discussion sharing their perspectives on sustainability of universities working under pressure and to speculate about the future of Shaninka. We would like the audience to join in and to contribute to this discussion

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Elena Lenskaya, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES)

Individual Presentations

• Critical Thinking As a Strategic Priority: learning from high performing education systems. - Andrey Samoylov, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES)

• Reducing the gap in access to quality preschool education for migrant children. - Natalia Shulgina, MSSES; Elizaveta Krichivets, MSSES

• The issue of restructuring of educational institutions in Moscow - Yuliya Galyamina, MSSES

• Higher education in federal systems: searching a new balance - Oleg Leshukov, Higher School of Economics; Isak Froumin, Institute of Education HSE; Simon Marginson, Institute of Education, University of London; Martin Carnoy, Stanford University