School

This was a second day largely filled with school stuff. One more of those tomorrow but after that I think we have a bit more time scheduled for our own Moscow experience. Some of the students are going to take us around to some different parts of the city, take us shopping, and the Chair of the English Language department is having us over on Friday. Nice prospects.

Jen and Gary and I delivered our second and final student presentation this morning. So, I guess this is a good time to make a few remarks about the school and the students.

As I mentioned yesterday, the school is pretty run down. An old institutional place – actually an armed services academy that consists of about six or eight connected buildings. You can walk around the entire campus following indoor corridors and staircases. It looks as if a wall hasn’t been painted nor a length of flooring replaced in fifty years. There is obviously not a lot of money being passed around in state sponsored higher education in Russia.

That being said, this is actually one of the better funded schools. I gather it receives a great deal of interest and support from the current government as a hope for carving out some high end education for the first or second tier of students here in Russia. All of the students are required to have quite advanced abilities in English and one other language by the time they graduate, and the students do deliver on this requirement. Even the second year students have excellent English skills, and the third year students have really superior skills.

I’ve gotten something of a tutorial on how the state university system works. It is the state universities that really have the best reputation here (because they are supervised and quality checked by the state – clearly one different sort of attitude than we would find in the US). All of the state universities are really administered under this system. So, although there are local schools, smaller and larger, some (like the Higher School of Economics) with various campuses around Russia – they are all ultimately answerable to the state university system. So, they are not institutionally as distinct as, say, St. Mike’s and Champlain College. They are differentiated by their faculties (which refers more to the college and degree program, not the people teaching the college). Various schools will have an exactly defined program of study that takes you to exactly this small array of degrees. For the HSE this would include degrees in business, international business, finance, etc. The degree is a five year program, and my impression is that students begin it at a level slightly more advanced (academically if not by age as well) than US students.

The classes we have worked with have really been impressive. The students are completely attentive and engaged and engaging. You notice an initial hesitance, but once they start talking they have a lot to say. They are well informed. For example, the second year students understood points from the US Constitution like the electoral college. The third year students could give a succinct explanation of the Republican and Democratic party and were up to date on current issues. They are polite – have boundless energy – and seem to enjoy a really friendly, if slightly more formal relationship with their teachers.

So, class has this impressively energetic, focused and engaged feel to it despite the fact that the paint is practically falling of the wall. It is good testimony to the fact that a school is more than its facilities.

Since Sunday, we have been guided and ferried around Moscow by a nice group of third and fourth year students. They’ve met us at the hotel in the morning, driven us to restaurants at night, taken us on walks through Red Square and the Kremlin, gotten us to the Pushkin museum today – and generally been good company. Most of these are the students are coming to Vermont next month, so we’ll have the chance to return the hospitality.

I’ve been part of two presentations to students here and both of these I partnered with Jen Vincent and Gary Scudder. Yesterday we met with a second year class and talked broadly about differences between Russian and the US politically and socially. We asked them about their impressions of US culture and fielded their questions. This was much the case with another presentation today, only at a slightly more elevated level with the third year students. We talked a bit about health care policy – comparing the US and Russian systems, and I spoke a bit about the political dimensions of this recent legislation in the states. Jen was there to handle economic dimensions of these kinds of issues. In both cases, it was a good experience mostly because the students really were forthcoming with their own questions and reactions. I am quite impressed.

The Russian tuition system might be an encouragement here. I gather the size of a students scholarship/funding for education is largely determined by performance. Excellent grades are rewarded by substantial or complete scholarship funding; poor grades are met (if not with expulsion) with reduced support.

It’s this sort of connection with the school that makes this kind of travelling great; you get to interact with people you would never run across were I simply staying downtown and visiting Red Square or the Pushkin before touring along to St. Petersburg. We commute in and out from the college to the hotel with other Muscovites, and generally get something of an inside view of what goes on here.

My impression is that it is not all that easy to be a Russian these days – and that brings me to the topic of the Moscow grind. This is not an easy place to function – and for a tourist particularly so. Perhaps I will get into that more tomorrow.

Photo: Nope, not the school I am talking about. This is the entrance to one of the buildings off of Red Square. I haven't been taking pictures these past two days - so I'll make a point to carry my camera tomorrow.