By Vestnik Kavkaza
Today, an all-Russian student forum opens in St. Petersburg. The best youth projects will be chosen there by open voting. 1500 students from 300 educational facilities, representing all regions of the federation, will take part in the federal round of the forum.
“The student forum is probably the largest arena for discussions which can attract the attention of students across the country,” says Alexander Stradze, director of the department of state policy in the sphere of education of children and youth. “ The most important thing is that it can be attended by employers. Maybe the expert community, and this expert community consists of more than 50 highly-qualified experts from various areas of the real sector of the economy, will be able to give advice to students that will really help them find their place in life and find perhaps even a job.”
“The forum will present a lot of formats for dialogue between student and rector organizations,” Olga Kashirina, general secretary of the Russian Union of Rectors, “It is important that this dialogue is not conducted in the Soviet style. The time of administrative conversations with students has passed and students are actively against this approach. It's time to develop a new model of dialogue, and we together with the Ministry of Education offered to students and rectors a model of open dialogue between the rector and the students. In this format more than 40 rectors representing the Rector's Corporation of various regions of the country from the Far East to Kaliningrad will participate in this format.”
Participants of the forum will discuss the development of the modular model of education which allows students to choose courses during his education, the expansion of the military departments and the overall revival of the patriotic vector of the activity of universities, the subject of financial freedom. “The subject of the system of search for non-governmental sources of funding by student organizations is also relevant here,” Kashirina explains. “After all, if one constantly relies on state funding, one cannot talk about a student fraternity, nor the existence of a student class as a united social reality. It always was like that, and the first student organizations that appeared in Russia were formed as a framework of mutual aid, also student associations, which helped students to find some part-time jobs. In fact, it was society that helped students both in studies and everyday life. Therefore, at the forum, we will talk about the organization of student organizations of mutual help, mutual assistance in finding employment and other social issues.”
Another important issue, according to Kashirina, is the program of development and the student's mission in this development. “A student does not come to the university as a statistical unit, each student has a personal development plan and academic policies. I think that this plan should be similar to and somehow correlate to the objectives pursued by the university nowadays, which is why there are development programs and specific indicators. Certainly the question of the formation of student promotional offices, student small innovative enterprises, the organization of inter-student, inter-collegiate and professional consultation. Both students and rectors believe that it is important to ensure the transparency of the establishment and distribution of the university budget.”
