Russia’s search giant Yandex has teamed up with Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE) in order to launch a new computer science faculty at the university. From September 2014 students will be able to enrol in ‘Applied Mathematics and IT’ and ‘Software Engineering’ courses at the faculty, which will offer 180 free places.
According to the faculty’s webpage, “the new faculty will prepare developers and researchers. The educational program is based on the experience of leading American and European Universities, including Stanford (USA) and EPFL (Switzerland), and also the School of Data Analysis, one of Russia’s leading postgraduate Computer Science schools.”
“The faculty offers a wide range of optional programs and students are able to choose a significant proportion of their courses, allowing them to take control of their own academic journey. The educational process as a whole is based on both practical and project work,” the faculty adds.
Ivan Arzhantsev, formerly Yandex director of educational projects, has been named Dean of the new faculty, while the “Big Data and Search” Department will be headed by Dmitry Vetrov, a teacher at Yandex’s School of Data Analysis (SHAD). Teaching and research will be carried out by Yandex employees and teachers from SHAD, while Yandex also hope to attract experts from other major Moscow research institutions, such as the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Systems Analysis.
Although the faculty is based at HSE, it was Yandex that initiated the project and developed the idea. The internet company also plans to play a very active role in the faculty, offering joint educational programs, practical classes and seminars, and hopes to employ some graduates.
However, Mikhail Levin, director of studies at SHAD, was keen to emphasis that the faculty will not become a ‘Yandex University’.
“We are bringing people in from Google and Abbyy, and from the scientific community. Of course, our staff will teach there as well. We helped to put together the programs, find people and publicise the faculty. But it will not be an exclusively ‘Yandex faculty’, because good education doesn’t work like that,” he stated.
Yandex also confirmed that students from the faculty will not be at an advantage when applying for placements/jobs at the company, but that they will have to apply under the same conditions as everyone else.
Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh is confident that the venture will be a success: “Computer science is developing at such a pace that classical education simply cannot keep up with it. Meanwhile, there is a huge demand for computer science expertise. Together with the Higher School of Economics, we are setting up a faculty at the HSE that will allow people to obtain a full degree in this field. We are confident that they will be in demand both in academia and in the IT industry”.
Yaroslav Kuzminov, the Rector of HSE added that “setting up a Faculty of Computer Science was an natural next step in the development of our university, and Yandex’s proposal has simply brought forward its creation. Even today, the HSE ranks fourth among research institutions and universities in terms of the number of publications relating to Information Technology. We hope that together with Yandex, we will attract the best teachers and researchers from leading Russian and international IT companies.”
Yandex is not the only major high-tech company involved in joint ventures with Moscow universities.
Mail.ru Group sponsors a faculty at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MFTI) and at Moscow State University (MSU), while ABBYY (in partnership with IBM) sponsors a computer linguistics faculty at MFTI and the Russian State University of Humanities. Last year Intel and MSU renewed a long-standing cooperation agreement.
