Boosting Russia's Higher Education through QuAsER

ITMO University’s European Rep Office in Brussels hosted the first session of the Quality Assurance Europe Russia (QuAsER) project. International experts and University’s officials discussed introducing European education quality assurance practices into Russian educational system and raising ITMO’s competitiveness in the global marketplace.

QuAsER is a pilot project that unites Jean Monnet Initiative, ITMO University and “5-100” Russian Academic Excellence Project in hopes of merging European expertise and Russian practices. If successful, it could be adopted on the national level, bringing the level of education at Russian universities to European standards.

Professor Vadim Veiko, head of Chair of Laser Technologies and Instrumentation, Anna Biliatdinova, engineer of Chair of High Performance Computing, Ekaterina Tulugurova, head of the Department of International Educational Programs, Elena Shumeiko, manager of ITMO University’s Department of International Educational Programs, Daria Kozlova, Vice Rector for International Relations, and Yury Monahov, head of Chair of Mechatronics, exchanged their views with European colleauges.

“It was offered to launch a department or project, which aimed to develop a full-fledged control system of educational services. We are also going to make a training program for our professors under which they will learn about the most effective ways of education`s development,” noted Ekaterina Tulugurova.

Neil Sparnon, higher education expert, came from London so as to present his paper on QuAsER`s development strategies. According to the expert, first of all it is necessary to develop an internal quality assurance management system. Furthermore it is also important to analyze higher education accreditation programs.

Anita Bisi, Aalto University`s representative, shared its` experience in establishing English as working language of the University. Finnish colleagues set a quota, which warrants to increase an amount of professors and managers who don`t speak Finnish. Then they made committees, councils, and work groups of the University to attract at least one international expert. Now internal correspondence and communication of Aalto University is in English.

“I really appreciated that all participants are specialists in different fields. Using various experiences they present peculiar views on upgrading of higher education,” said Mathias Falkenstein, CHE Consult GmbH`s expert.

QuAsER`s participants are going to meet one more time so as to present their summaries of the first meeting.