Yaroslav Kuzminov: ‘We should Become Part of the Global Community’

— Mr. Kuzminov, The HSE is one of those universities which won the competition for a grant for entering international rankings. To what extent you respect these rankings yourself and where is the HSE today?

— Today we are in the 501-550 group of the general QS World University Ranking. In the rankings by subject area we are somewhat higher – around three or four hundred. In the SSRN (Social Science Research Network, the largest digital database of research papers), HSE is in the middle of the top 200 by citation rate.

Rankings are formed by the academic community, which is mainly English-speaking. For example, a considerable part of a university’s ‘weight’ in QS is formed by expert opinions. I am also one of the experts, but there are about 5000 of them, and the share of Russian participants is less than one percent. In order to be known in this community, we should not build alternative rankings because we were offended in these ones, but develop in a way so that the reputation of the HSE and other Russian universities becomes obvious in the global academic community.

This means that we need to enroll international students. Today they make up less than 5% of the HSE, and we need 12-15%. For this purpose, we need English-taught courses. It’s also necessary to enter the international labour market of teachers. Today about 100 out of 3000 lecturers and researchers at the HSE are young holders of PhD degrees from international universities.

— Are our lecturers in demand on the global market? Or are we only buying?

— We certainly do supply staff to the international academic market. First, half of those hired by the HSE are Russians: some of them studied in American and European universities from the very beginning, and some of them studied in Russia, and received their degrees abroad. Secondly, 50-70 of our professors and associate professors read lectures in leading universities every year, such as Stanford, for example. The global academic community is united, and, I think, about 10-15 Russian universities are part of this market. Actually, they are the ones listed in the global rankings.

The problems is how not only to supply brains, as it was in 1990s. Five years ago, the HSE, the European University in Saint Petersburg, and the New Economic School in Moscow (we were the only state university among them) were the first to hire lecturers independently of their nationality – the main thing is that they should be the ones we need.

— Back to the governmental grants for ‘getting into the rankings’. When this money is given to chemists or physicists, it is more clear: laboratories, equipment, etc. Butwhatdoeseconomicsciencespendmoneyon?

— Money similar to that spent by physicists and chemists on equipment are spent by economists, sociologists, and political scientists on experimental studies. The HSE outgoings on one researcher (not on salary, but on collecting empirical data, organizing surveys)is  almost the same amount as the Moscow State University Department of Physics spends on one physicist.

It costs from 1.5 to 5 million roubles to collect data and to organize a sociological or selective statistical survey. In most branches of science only about ten percent of researchers need just their head, books, and everyday communication with like-minded people. They are methodologists, theoreticians, and historians of science. But in order to allow the other 90% of both economists and physicists to work with empirical data, we have to spend serious money. Or the science loses connection with reality.

We should become part of the global community: publish our papers in English; get criticized.

— How should a university’s effectiveness be evaluated?

— It’s easy. Four components. Research at the university, the quality of enrolment, graduate salaries, and the main thing – whether a university (or, more specifically, certain departments within that University) has a thriving labour market.