Russian higher education needs to be consolidated for better promotion in the world. This was discussed by the participants of the congress «Vocational Education, Science and Innovation in the 21st Century», held at the EXPOFORUM Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The current state of Russian education and ways of its development in the changed conditions were discussed at the meeting «The role of science and vocational education in improving the quality of human life» as part of the congress «Vocational Education, Science and Innovation in the 21st Century», dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences and St. Petersburg University.

Starting the discussion, Olga Vasilyeva, President of the Russian Academy of Education, recalled the task set by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin of educating at least one million specialists over 3 years. To do this, she believes, special attention should be paid to the professional orientation of children and adolescents, starting with preschoolers. She spoke about the career guidance system in the USSR and stressed that it is necessary to find a balance between fundamental knowledge and practical skills, which is important primarily for industry.

A number of presentations addressed the issue of competition between academic and corporate education, which has been developing very actively in recent years. Thus, Vladimir Peshekhonov, Director of the Central Research Institute Electropribor, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, drew attention to the effective interaction of the Academy of Sciences with the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and Evgeny Shlyakhto, the General Director of the National Research Center named after Almazov, who devoted his report to the transition to a new era in medicine – an individual approach to the patient, in contrast to the generally accepted standard approach, stated that all successful projects of the recent times are public ones, and the business plays the second role there. But, for example, Lyubov Nefedova, director of the Almaz-Antey Research Institute of Applied Materials Science, who spoke about the company’s educational programs, including the fact that the departments he created operate at Polytech, St. Petersburg State University and Voenmeh, noted that the equipment of the laboratories of the Almaz-Antey scientific and educational center is better than in many universities.

Nikita Anisimov, Rector of the Higher School of Economics, in his report called for abandoning the previous «market» view of education as a service that is sold abroad. We need to get away from this, he believes, think about the value essence of the Russian presence abroad and promote the quality of education. Nikita Anisimov invited other universities to use foreign Higher School of Economics sites for this purpose. Elena Chernova, Academic Secretary of St. Petersburg State University, also drew attention to the growing number of international students, both on a budgetary and commercial basis, and called their involvement a manifestation of «soft power politics».

«Only a consortium of universities can create powerful educational platforms abroad», she stressed.

St. Petersburg State University also has an educational center in Egypt, where more than a thousand people have already studied, and is now preparing to open a center in Azerbaijan. Elena Chernova proposed to introduce a system of grants for the arrival and residence in Russia of foreign students from poor countries.

Summing up the meeting, the rector of the Mining University, Vladimir Litvinenko, said that in the current circumstances, the main thing is to regain faith in their capabilities. Universities should develop based on the goals and objectives of the state, Vladimir Litvinenko said, and goal-setting, in his opinion, appears along with ideology. In the context of the global confrontation, measures for the development of education must be adequate to the nature of the threats, Evgeny Shmelev, Vice President of AvtoVAZ added.