University Open Day

From the very beginning, the Higher School of Economics has been unique among Russian universities in terms of its openness to the world, and a recent open air day in Gorky Park is just one more example of this. For the first time, not only prospective students and their parents, but literally the ‘man in the street’ were all able to get information about the HSE, attend lectures by some of the best professors and guest experts, and, the most important, to actually see the people who make up the university. And all of this happened in a place named ‘HSE Land’ by the organizers, in the open air on the bank of the Moskva River in a beautiful park setting.

In the park you could see the HSE’s history through photos, get detailed information about the university, talk to Yaroslav Kuzminov, HSE Rector, and converse with graduates. By the way, graduates have recently set up an Alumni Association.

There were opportunities to play beach volleyball, throw frisbees, jump off rollerskate ramps, listen to music and attend events in a special lecture centre.

One of the meetings in the lecture center was a discussion between historians, philologists, linguists and urban researchers. Another meeting gave students the opportunity to talk to Yaroslav Kuzminov, HSE Rector, Olga Golodets, Vice Prime Minister of Russia, Ksenia Yudaeva, Russian G20 Sherpa, and Sergey Kapkov, Director of Moscow Department of Culture. The discussion covered such issues as the place of universities in contemporary society, social problems, pension reform, the Eurozone crisis, statism, the generation gap, and cultural expansion in the city, along with many other issues.

The HSE Rector talked about the phenomenon of higher education in Russia. Once exclusive, today it has become almost universal (75 percent of school graduates enter higher education). This has happened because higher education and the university environment is an indispensable condition for normal socialization in modern cities. ‘You need to graduate from a university, since there you get the ability to communicate, you get the set of cultural skills which exists there,’ HSE Rector said, ‘At a university not only do students learn from the lecturers,, but also from the environment itself’.

According to Yaroslav Kuzminov, university remains a unique place where both students and professors have freedom of choice and opportunity for creativity. Their work is not limited by hierarchy, since the prevailing links in a university are not vertical, but horizontal.

‘Our society is in a very important stage of transition from statism and a hierarchic society, to a society formed by free citizens who decide for themselves which relationships to participate in’, the HSE Rector believes, ‘This is realized in many ways: by the fact that more and more people enter universities, and that there are more and more freelancers on the labour market’.

The HSE Day, full of sport, music, lectures, and debates, culminated with a concert and fireworks.

Oleg Seregin, HSE News Service

Photos by Vasily Begal