The HSE teaches students to be decent people, and if they refuse to settle for less, but practice what they were taught, then society itself will become what they want it to be
'The position of President is really just a construct.
It was created in order to involve me in the university while taking into account my lack of time. I work mostly with external organizations. My key task is to lobby for the interests of higher education in general and for its modernization.
The state urgently needs professionals right now. Primarily, it needs people who know how to weigh up the options and build strategies. We should bear in mind that a bureaucratic state needs more state officials than a liberal one. But I’d like a different future for HSE graduates. I would like them to live in a country where each government official takes responsibility for his decisions and is hired under a contract where all procedures are transparent. And, by the way, devising those very procedures is a job for HSE graduates. But I wouldn’t recommend going into government fresh from university. Power can make us cynical. And to avoid getting trapped in bureaucratic systems, we need to toughen up first. That's why it is better to start by working in a business or academic environment, to decide, what power should be like, what the state should be like, and how relationships between business and government should be built. If you do then work in government structures, it is absolutely essential to keep your focus and avoid ‘mutating' into the traditional mind-set.
I believe that the HSE is not only a place to study economics. It is a university in every sense of the word but, so far, lacks a faculty in chemistry.
The HSE teaches students to be decent people, and if they refuse to settle for less, but practice what they were taught, then society itself will be what they want it to be. And I sincerely wish it for them.'
Alexander Shokhin