OREANDA-NEWS. The President continued his series of meetings with staff and students at Russia’s federal universities. In April, Mr Putin met with staff and students at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.

* * *

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon, friends,

I propose that we make today’s meeting as informal and simple as possible. I will say a few opening words and then I’d like to hear from the university’s teachers and managers. I’d like to hear from the students here too, the undergraduates and postgraduates, hear about your aims and achievements, what has helped you succeed, and what you still lack in order to attain even more, even better results. Let’s reflect together on what we can and should do to develop the university and our education system and science in general.

I don’t really have much to say given that you know your own university much better than I do. I know that it is among the leaders in various categories in all the different ratings – I won’t list them now. It looks very solid. This is a big university with a long history. If I recall correctly, you will be celebrating the university’s 100th anniversary next year, because the university takes the date of its founding from the moment when the Imperial University of Warsaw was moved to Rostov-on-Don during World War One.

Today, it is a big learning and research centre with 41,000 students and many postgraduate and doctoral students. True, there are some problems too. As far as I know, less than a quarter of postgraduate students defend their theses on time. This is probably one of the issues we could talk about today.

You have a good scientific and research base and plenty of technology platforms. You have techno-parks and similar organisational units. What made me especially happy and even surprised me a little are the excellent financial results your research activities have produced. You have made 1.6 billion rubles [more than USD 51 million]. It’s quite amazing how you do this and it’s really great to see. You’re doing a marvellous job. 

You have established a couple of dozen small businesses. The university has involvement in a number of different commercial organisations working in various areas connected to education and science. This is really all very impressive. It makes me happy for you, and I want to wish you success, but as I said, I realise that you no doubt have problems too.

Let’s talk about this now.