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Have you worked as a teacher in other countries? How foreign students differ from Russian ones?

I was teaching in Britain a bit. I have also taught in Russia’s regions, outside Moscow. For example, in Perm (HSE campus), and in Ekaterinburg, at UGU and UPI: Ural Pedagogical Institute. There I was teaching in Russian. And then I'm also going to teach a week-end class on Development Economics in Germany in April.

Apart from the class I taught in Britain, I don’t have much experience teaching non-Russian students, for now. But I have to say that I really like teaching in Russia. We had a great class on Institutional Economics this year. I liked the students, they are good people! The PhD students I am currently teaching are also great fun to work with. We have really good discussions.

At HSE there are many students who are genuinely interested in what they study. They don't just study because they have to study something, but because they really seem to be interested in their subject, especially in Political Science. When you see your students on Facebook, you realize that they do not only care about the subject during class, but also outside. Some of them work for "Dozhd" for example, or for other TV stations, some work for Levada or write articles...

In autumn there was a world rating of the Universities (Quacquarelli Symonds), and among all Russian Universities only MSU was in the top-200. Why, do you think, there was no HSE? What should be improved here?

For example, there is this program to get 5 Russian Universities among the top-100 universities in the world. The problem with these rankings is that they depend a lot on publications in international English-language journals, while many researchers at HSE still publish in Russian Also, these rankings do not necessarily capture specifics of a particular country. For example, what I like at Vyshka is that many students here are already involved in research at an early age, while in Western Europe students are much less involved. Young students who are 22-23 are already working as full-time members in laboratories and research groups. This is a very nice thing, but it’s not reflected in the rankings.

Instead, as I said what is measured are publications in English-language journals. Many people at Vyshka publish in Russian as they still have some problems with the English language. So HSE hires foreign faculty. But in order to get foreigners here you have to pay them much more than what Russians earn at Vyshka, although the quality of the research is often the same, and Russians often have to teach much more. I mean, it’s a bit tricky trying to do it only by money, to "buy" publications from abroad and then get better rankings. Rankings are important, but they are not the only thing which is important...

Still, I think that Vyshka is moving into the right direction, by trying to internationalize. But I would put more emphasis on quality than on quantity. It seems that during last 2-3 years many people were hired just to increase the amount of publications, irrespective of these people fitting into existing research structures at HSE or not. What is really important is to build dynamic research structures that then can produce the necessary publications. Some laboratories do really a good job in this respect, while in other faculties foreign PhDs are still very much isolated. It’s a long process.

What is good here is that Vyshka puts a lot of emphasis on participating in international conferences. They are trying to spread the Vyshka brand abroad. When I go to conferences, there're always a lot of people representing HSE. It’s the only Russian university in the social sciences that has a real presence at international conferences. Very rarely you meet there people form Moscow State University, for example. Now of course there is the problem with the exchange rate, which makes it more difficult to travel abroad, but it seems that the HSE management is committed to keep this international presence going.