The international conference began with a series of meetings devoted to education in the context of new global markets and the special role of the university in the city life. The event participants stress the importance of cooperation between universities and business; analyze the processes of interaction with the subjects of both local and global infrastructures.
"The cooperation of Russian universities with the business is still at an early stage of development, and so we are interested in the experience of other BRICS countries. We think it would be useful to focus the Network University activity on the basis of scientific and educational centers and centers of excellence, because here we can offer a lot in return," Viktor Koksharov says, the rector of the Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin.
Vladimir Vasilyev, the rector of ITMO University, notes that the decisions are often made spontaneously during the urban planning. However, the universities should be able to look beyond the horizon and plan the development for at least 20-25 years.
"If the mission and strategic objective of the university is not agreed and is not synchronized with the city development concept, the city won't disappear; in such circumstances it is the university that will collapse. If the university is going to be global, the megalopolis in which it is located, must set itself the task to develop as a global city. In this regard, St. Petersburg is an open international laboratory of higher education institutions," Vladimir Vasilyev says.
The St. Petersburg universities representatives paid particular attention to assessing the university complexes development prospects. The preliminary results of the UniverCity: Knowledge and New Urban Culture research were presented at the conference. The research will become one of the main topics of the upcoming Versatility Harmony forum. On the example of five St. Petersburg universities the experts rated the degree of universities integration in the urban environment from the viewpoint of urban planning, transport and economic systems.
There was enough data for the first two studies but it is still impossible for scientists to fully weigh the mutual influence of the city budgets and universities.
"The most important task at the current stage of research is the collection of data on the interaction of the two economies: the city and the university. Unfortunately we don't see the full picture because of the lack of information. In particular, universities are not required to publish all the reports. For example, we know how many fee-paying students there are in high school, but we don't know from which Russian regions they came from. There are difficulties in specifying the size of the universities property and land complex. However, the most ambitious task in this study is the estimation of the capital, which was created by university graduates. It is because of the economic activity of former students that universities have a serious impact on the economy not only of the city, but of the country as well," Elena Korotkova says, the senior analyst of the Center for Urban Studies of the Skolkovo Business School.
The key event of the first day of the conference was the signing of cooperation agreements between the Russian association of higher education educational institutions Global Universities and three major associations of educational administrators from different countries: the Italian universities rectors conference, Brazilian association of international education FAUBAI and Korean association of foreign students administrators.
"First we fix mutual obligations to promote international exchange and recruitment of students, solve the problem of taking a worthy place in the world rankings. Key indicators necessary for this are academic reputation, the number of foreign students and foreign teachers; this is the main content of agreements which were signed today," Jaroslav Kuzminov notes, the chairman of the Association council, the rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.
It is important to note that the event takes place on 14-15 May 2015 under the patronage of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation and it is included in the official agenda of the Russian chairmanship in the BRICS. The conference is organized by the National Research University Higher School of Economics, ITMO University, Project 5-100 and the Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin.