People’s Friendship University of Russia (PFUR) is one of the best universities in Russia by any measure, but it stands out in particular for having the highest number of international students. Rector Vladimir Filippov spoke to RIA Novosti correspondent Anna Kurskaya about how the university provides high-quality education to students from 148 countries.
Mr. Filippov, what percentage of your students are foreign? What nationalities are represented at your university?
Vladimir Filippov: International students make up about 35% of our student body, and they come from 148 countries. Our university is unique in this respect. QS recently ranked us first among over 7,000 BRICS universities in terms of the percentage of international students.
In the past 20 years international students at our university have increased in number and diversity. This points to the growing trust in our university and higher demand for our programs.
Do you think participating in international rankings helps you attract foreign students? PFUR is one of the highest ranked Russian universities in the QS raking of the world’s top universities. Are you making any special efforts to maintain your ranking?
Vladimir Filippov: PFUR is one of eight Russian universities on the QS top 500 list, and it is seventh in the QS ranking of universities in the Baltic countries, that includes Russia and other CIS countries, which is also very good. In the national ranking, we are always in range of fourth to sixth place, out of 1,100 universities. We don’t make any special efforts with these rankings in mind. Our policies simply produce those results.
To reinforce my point, I’ll note that in the first round we decided not to join the list of 15 universities to be added to the top 100. Our university has its own specific features, competitors, goals and targets, but we do get into the rankings.
PFUR is sixth out of 10,500 national research organizations in academic papers published and 33rd in citations. This is the result of our policies that reward academic staff whose work is published frequently in leading journals.
Recently the Thomson Reuters agency analyzed innovation in Russia as reflected by patents. PFUR generated the second highest number of patents, behind only Rosatom (national nuclear corporation), in the 10 year period from 2002 to 2012.
That's remarkable.
Vladimir Filippov: Yes, especially considering that the Ministry of Industry ranked third. This shows how prolific our scientists are. We’ve been encouraging their work for over 10 years.
Speaking about rankings, we have to take part in them to make the university a recognizable name in the world but, as I emphasized at my press conference at RIA Novosti, students are coming to us from more and more countries (and we expect that number to reach 150 countries in the next year) primarily because the education received at our university helps them find jobs when they return home despite the competition from graduates of other universities – British, French or American. We cannot afford to produce weak graduates because when we send weak graduates back to a particular country, rival universities will capitalize on this and we’ll stop getting students from that country. That’s why we pay more attention to the quality of education and life on our campus than to the rankings.
Your motto is “We train the world’s elite.” That’s a very strong statement…
Vladimir Filippov: Yes, and it places an enormous responsibility on us, from the cleanliness of our facilities to the quality of the teaching. Our students and staff bear additional responsibilities as well – we have codes of honor and conduct for students, professors and staff, and violations result in expulsion for students and dismissal for staff.
We’re probably the only university in Russia to fail dozens of students on state graduation exams each year. Last year 25 students received an unsatisfactory grade on their exams after studying at the medical school for seven years and returned home, to Siberia or to Africa, without diplomas. We feel sorry for these students, but we can’t grant a degree to unprepared specialists. The same is true for all of our departments.
Moreover, we know that graduates who return home usually have to pass licensing exams given by national associations of doctors, lawyers, engineers and teachers, and we don’t want to hurt our reputation by sending them unqualified graduates. So again, our university is doing everything we can to live up to our motto of training the world’s elite.
What kinds of degrees are especially popular with foreign students?
Vladimir Filippov: Foreigners are primarily interested in pursuing medical degrees. This is logical because many of them come from developing countries with huge healthcare challenges.
There are many foreigners in our departments of engineering, physics, mathematics and natural sciences. Their numbers have been growing in the past few years because we have managed to maintain Russia’s traditionally high standards of education in mathematics, physics and chemistry.
Law is popular. International law attracts the biggest number of foreign master’s students and postgraduates out of all 200 departments. That’s what future diplomats study. This year international students accounted for half of all graduates with political science degrees. Lots of students come to study journalism, which is a fairly international occupation.
Many foreign students choose our university because we offer a unique resource that other universities do not, friends and contacts from dozens of different countries around the world. Many of our graduates return home to start their careers, becoming businessmen, diplomats or ministers, and these friendships are very helpful.
How do you make sure that incoming foreign students have the necessary level of Russian?
Vladimir Filippov: It is by no means easy to teach Russian to students from a hundred countries who speak different languages at our pre-enrollment course. But our instructors have the necessary know-how. It is no accident that we have Russia’s only professional development department for teachers of Russian as a foreign language.
After the Soyuz-Apollo space flight in 1976, it was decided that foreign cosmonauts would be invited to fly on Soviet spacecraft, which gave rise to the need for an immersion course in Russian that lasted several weeks. Since 1980 university professors have taught Russian to all foreign cosmonauts that fly on our spacecraft under a contract with the Cosmonaut Training Center. So our university has unique experience in teaching Russian.
How can foreigners interested in enrolling in your university go about it?
Vladimir Filippov: They should start by visiting the university’s website. Our site is available not only in Russian but also in English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic. We’ve published our admission guidelines there, as well as contact numbers and a list of documents they have to submit. I hope they will succeed and book a spot among the world’s elite!
