IET Meeting: university management technologies were discussed at the RUSSIA EXPO

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The panel discussion "University Management in Modern Contexts" took place in the "ATOM" Pavilion as part of the Third All-Russian IET Meeting, dedicated to the implementation of individual educational trajectories (IET) in higher education. The IET Meeting is one of the key annual events of the Decade of Science and Technology in Russia under the "Designing the Future" track. It focuses on discussions and exchange of experiences among rectors and vice-rectors, leaders of Advanced Engineering Schools, and IT teams from Russian universities that are implementing or planning to implement individual educational trajectories for students.

"My dream is that all universities will stop being boring and start developing, and they should do this in three ways. First, they should be interesting for students. Second, they should meet the tasks set by regional enterprises that urgently need personnel. This involves establishing communication and finding interaction points. Third, they should learn to work in consortia. Work in such a way that competencies are united, and competition becomes synergistic rather than adversarial," said Olga Petrova, Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education, who joined the discussion via video conference.

More than 170 representatives from over 80 universities across all federal districts of the Russian Federation participated in the event. The geographical range of participants spun from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad, from Elista to Yakutsk, and from Murmansk to Simferopol. The most attended IET Meeting gathered not only technical, medical, economic, and legal universities but also institutions of creative directions, as well as pedagogical and agricultural universities.

"The system of nuclear specialists differs from many other fields in that it involves planning many years ahead. Modern nuclear power plants are designed for 100 years. The topic of our meeting today is exceptionally important for the stability of universities and for a managerial model that is also planned for more than just a few years. In our lives, changes and new challenges occur almost daily. Today, university leaders — both vice-rectors and rectors — face entirely different volumes of tasks compared to ten years ago. Today, any university leader lives in a paradigm where tasks are set from various directions, and all of them need to be solved simultaneously. Today, all discussion participants will share their thoughts and experiences," outlined the discussion format Evgeny Szhyonov, Scientific Director of the Expert-Analytical Center for Science and Education Policy and member of the Public Council at the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia.

Chairman of the IET Consortium of Universities and CEO of CUSTIS Group Vladimir Rahteenko emphasized that universities should strive to exist relatively independently.

"The first thing universities need is the desire to think for themselves. This means having an image of the future and working towards it. And this is happening: there are strategic programs. We can analyze how seriously they are written. But the image of the future is something that needs to be worked on and constantly cared for," noted the chairman.

Andrey Volkov, Scientific Director of the "Priority-2030" program and professor at the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, highlighted the importance of active reflection: "Answering the question, why is it like this now? Why do we work this way and achieve such outstanding results? Analyzing why we act at the level of rules, mechanisms, and principles is a crucial intellectual function, a very hard job. Trust and openness are needed, along with a group of people who take responsibility."

Several key challenges are present, the main one being the need to reconsider the paradigm of the research agenda, emphasized Sergei Salikhov, First Vice-Rector of the National University of Science and Technology MISiS.

"In this sense, we are increasingly moving into the applied field. The so-called 'product-oriented' approach to the research agenda is beginning to dominate. We are increasingly moving into creating specific products that can dominate and help the economy. From a management perspective, it is necessary to balance fundamental and applied science," he noted.

During the panel discussion, Pavel Muzyka, General Director of IET University, and Andrei Keller, Head of the Federal State Autonomous Scientific Institution "Sociocenter," also shared their insights and personal experiences.