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Russia Backs Sending Top Students Abroad With a Catch
First time accepted submitter Clark Schultz writes "Vladimir Putin plans to send the country's top domestic students abroad in an effort to prepare engineers, doctors, and scientists with the most modern education. The initiative comes with a catch: Students must return to Mother Russia to work. Though critics say that the students may be tempted to stay abroad after receiving their advanced degrees, Putin is confident they will be properly motivated to keep up their end of the bargain. As one advocate notes, the 'brilliant' practice of educating Russians at top global universities dates back to the times of Peter the Great."
Just don't come back gay.
If they don't want to go back to Russia, they don't have to accept the grants.
I'm not really seeing a problem here?
Sent from my PDP-11
They will be made into nobles. After several generations, there will be a revolution, and cycle will repeat.
the whole point of these programs is to kind of 'leapfrog' a country's current level of technology/skill. If the state pays for a student to study abroad (i'm looking at you Saudi Arabia), it should absolutely be implied that the student *should* return home to put those skills to use.
From the summary:
"educating Russians at top global universities dates back to the times of Peter the Great"
So... what's the point of this story?
.
The crying shame in the UK is that many graduates cannot find real jobs and end up flipping burgers. If Putin ensures that they have a good chance of getting a job upon return to Russia - many will find that an attractive proposition and be more than willing to return.
Malaysia does the same thing. Send out bright students on a full scholarship to American universities (preferably the cheaper, public schools), with the requirement that they perform a short stint (3-5 years) as an indentured servant of the state.
For foreigners it's generally a good deal, not withstanding the opportunity for corruption in selection. You get a free education and a guaranteed job when you graduate.
But it sucks for Americans as it drives up tuition.
This is common practice on lots of countries. In Venezuela this has been going for almost a century (though i don't know the current status since our problem with $$$), they give you a scholarship to study abroad with the condition to come back, otherwise they give you (or your relatives) the bill.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
China - I can understand. But for Russians ? I worked with several Russians, all of them very-good-to-brilliant programmers and scientists. They had no trouble in getting recognition for their work and skills. Could you expound a bit on your remark ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Best of all with this practice is that russians aren't hypocrites, at one time they educated foreign people with the same catch, that they would return home and benefit their own populations. Of course, hopefully with some new ideas and as many as possible as KGB/GRU agents.
Or all the loved ones they left behind, will pay for their mistake.
Nothing new here. Many governments run scholarship schemes for study at foreign universities and include a period of bonded labour afterwards. Even the US does this in areas of its strategic interest, such as naval architecture.
Many people from Commonwealth nations studied at Australian, UK and Canadian universities as part of the Colombo Plan for development of poorer Commonwealth nations. This aspect of the Colombo Plan was by far the most successful and there are periodic attempts to revive it.
Let's ask ourselves: What would Ivan the Terrible do?
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Why would they want to do that? Russian science and engineering education (especially undergraduate) is top-notch. I would NOT want to have been educated in the States, including the overhyped Harvard or MIT although I do like working and living here. Graduate school is a different matter but it is hard to beleive that the problems with Russian science are education related. Money (or lack thereof) and lack of respect is a more likely cause.
Pay for the education through student loans.
Then Russia owns them forever, just like regular creditors.
Will find an alarming drop in relatives answering their skype calls.
[*] Gazetted officers are the civilian equivalent of the commissioned officers. Induction to the service by the President published in The Gazette of the Government of India. I had the right to sign government documents and files in green ink. My batch mates are under secretaries and joint secretaries of the government now. I am a lowly slashdotter with 31 achievements.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
in the US if they wanted to. So why not? Hell, they could partner with the State Department for stateside enforcement on this whole "get educated in the US, contribute to the economy back home" scheme.
Perhaps Putin will find new ways to motivate them.
Vietnam has a similar scheme where they issue scholarships to western countries (eg. Australia). I'm familar with the Vietnam-Australia version and this is how it works. The Vietnamese/Australian government have these joint scholarships, from memory they were pronounced as "OZ" scholarship, but I've never seen how it's spelt.
After the students complete their studies, they are expected to return home and work for at least a year (or two?) before being allowed to work outside Vietnam. This is written down on their scholarship contract and the time is tracked. To discourage Vietnamese students from simply staying in Australia, they are forced to leave for at least 1 year (or two?) before re-entering the country. Where they go Australia doesn't care, as long as they're out of the country.
This sounds all good in theory but in practice a lot of Vietnamese students rather not go back home to work. Simply because after having tasted the good life they do not want to go back. And more so if they pursued an academic career, because it's non-existent back home.
Have gnu, will travel.
These days you can just buy textbooks, read them, watch youtube videos, go online to ask questions, and learn just about anything you want that you would learn from a university. OK, some exceptions maybe, for instance, labwork experience but you don't need an expensive fancy university for that, your local community college or university can do just fine. You can get just as good an education at your local university as you could at a prestigious foreign one but you need to have interest and ambition.
Yes I am college educated but almost all of what I know isn't from school. I speak three languages just about, almost none of that is from school (one from my parents that I learned as a child, Spanish from Youtube, watching T.V., the radio, podcasts, various books such as verb conjugation books, an English to Spanish dictionary, grammar books, etc...). What I know about cryptography came from hours and hours of podcasts and lots and lots of reading. Yes, when it comes to things like physics and chemistry it helps to have a lab and have the tools that school provides to give you some preliminary experience but one doesn't need a super fancy expensive school for that.
That's what I meant. I work with a guy who is about 70 years old. He had a mathematics degree from one of those universities, and then later also did CS, "just for fun". In spite of his age, the man is brilliant. So... we would be talking about language studies ? Humanities ? Sociology, psychology and so on ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
... the world out there will NOT believe in you when they know you are from Russia
Really? All of my Russian colleagues in physics are incredibly talented and well trained and have great senses of humor too! Based on this experience I'd have zero hesitation in accepting a suitably skilled Russian grad student and I hope this programme causes more of them to apply to my institute. If they have to go back to work in Russia afterwards then that's not a bad thing - science it a global enterprise and it will undoubtedly help Russia build ties with the global community is is good for everyone.
also at a lower cost then US University with out the big loans.
I'm Russian in "the world out there", and I have no idea what the hell you're talking about. No-one had ever looked down on me because of my national origin.
Have you considered that the problem might actually be with yourself?
in the US if they wanted to. So why not? Hell, they could partner with the State Department for stateside enforcement on this whole "get educated in the US, contribute to the economy back home" scheme.
I don't think they're talking about the US, nobody wants to be trapped in that hole.
I don't think we are talking about Computer Science. There are three universities in Russia (1 in Moscow and 2 in St. Petersburg) that are all better in Computer Science than any university in US.
Hmmmm.
And carrying it further.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Putin probably does not care that much about actual kids who would go abroad. However, the chance to do it for free would greatly stimulate the rest of the population (abroad is still a candy for many Russians). That's the goal - make education cool again.
As per your original point, yes Russian universities are good (and some - usually the best - still provide free education for most of former republics).
That's about as good an idea as cutting funding for US gradstudents in the sciences (who usually have their education plus living expenses paid on government grants) until the US government starts behaving reasonably on other matters. Personally, I think that's a fucking stupid idea (then again, I'm a bit biased, as someone who just completed a PhD funded by NSF grants, but doesn't work towards supporting the "unreasonable" things the government does). But, maybe you think a world with fewer scientists would be a better place, or one where the highly educated are isolated from personal international experience (so all those Russian and Chinese grads will only get to learn about the US through the distant filter of Russian and Chinese media propaganda --- I suppose that would put them on more equal footing with the typical US citizen who has also never seen the world except through megacorporate media fabrications).
Captcha: subverts
Before Putin, the testing of school graduates had a form of individual exams and essays performed by teachers. Now, in attempts to exclude corruption, the automated formal tests (YEGE - Yedinyi Gosudarstvennyi Ekzamen - The Uniform State Exam) are performed. The graduates just mark the numbers of correct answers.
I am not going to discuss the destruction of rational thinking by training the children to choose the only correct answer, especially when there is a political course such as history. I just inform you that the HIGHEST grades were obtained by peasants from Northern Caucasian republics such as Chechnya, Ingushetia and Daghestan (Remember Tsarnaev?). As a result, since the students are accepted to institutes according to YEGE only, they were accepted to institutes and it became clear that their grades are FAKE. And since it appeared impossible to eradicate corruption in Caucasian schools the only result was that the Russian institutes required the right to reinstate the entry exams, and some leading institutes obtained such a right. All other institutes accept them and just sell the good marks and diplomas.
You didn't just tell Russia that it can't use international law, did you. Are you really daring Lawyers to not be able to do something using the law??
I'm Russian and I came to America originally to study but I'll never go back as long as Putin's in power. Besides my programming job here pays way more than I'd make at home and the weather in California rocks!
Putin will murder your family if you don't return.
Ah, Comrade Putin, he is bringing back another practice of the USSR: defection.
That actually exists, it's the J1 visa. It has a 2-year period where you can't get another US visa (from certain categories, like J1 and H1B), and the only way to get an exemption is with approval from your own country.
Putin is confident they will be "properly motivated"
in spite of? unless the man had dementia, why would you assume less intelligence because of advanced age? if anything, i think the experience and wisdom that come with age would only improve upon his brilliance.
Heh. These, and every other ranking I've ever seen, are seriously twisted to favour western universities. Not to talk about a serious twist to usually favour those universities that have "all" fields under one roof (which does make sense in some way, but not for a student in a given field looking for the very best _education_ )
Also, knowing the chinese, and how they study, I'd say they have somehow gamed the ranking system. The students in china cheat. It happens in good universities, and nobody gives a damn.
Oh god, you can't even spell "Vodka". You should drink more.
w00sh
Any idea what the names of those are? Maybe you have a better source, but I don't see any listed here:
http://www.shanghairanking.com/SubjectCS2013.html
or here:
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2013/computer-science-and-information-systems
or here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/09/best-university-computer-science_n_2439697.html
or here:
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2011/sep/05/top-100-universities-world-computer-science-and-information-systems-2011
Just another day in Paradise
The most heart breaking and worst things about racism is that it hurts peoples feelings and gives them a lesser sense of self worth.
Same thing happened in Romania. Students had to return and were supposed to work in the public administration, but no agency would hire them. It was unclear wether they had the right to take a job in the private sector, and benefits in Romania last only 6 months. They made some scandal in the press two years ago - haven't heard of them ever since. Prolly they went into the EU to get decent jobs and never looked back.
I suppose that depends on where you go, but I haven't seen much snubbing of Chinese hereabouts - US West Coast, Seattle and around. On the contrary, if anything, they seem to be lumped together under the common "smart overeducated Asian" stereotype along with Japanese and Koreans.
Indians, now, I'll give you that.
Having experience with actual Russians with actual Russian high-schooling and degrees, I can safely say their education system is far better than Western countries.
All of those rankings have one fatal flaw, they put more than 50% weight on citations of articles or books by the staff of those universities published in English Language (No Russian, No Mandarin). If instead of focusing on the teachers, they focus on the students, the picture would be quite different.
I'd hire a student from those three schools over anybody who studied in any university in US, no questions asked. Especially over anyone who went to High School in US.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Your ability to learn new stuff definitely drops off with age. Physicists and mathematicians for example tend to do their best work when they're young. Same with programmers.
Probably your brain starts off in a low entropy state and as you get old the entropy increases and performance drops. Like an old file system installation getting all fragmented and or SSD perfomance dropping with time.
Even animals seem to have it. Kittens are very curious and playful. Older cats are lazy as shit.
It's very unlikely we'll ever be able to reverse this process non destructively even if we figure out how to reverse physical ageing. And actually physical ageing happens because of selective pressure. Once you've bred then selective pressure ceases. So basically evolution has to produce humans that are healthy for the first thirty years or so so they can breed but any bugs that appear after that it regards as WONTFIX because by that point people have either bred in which case their genes have found a new body to live in, or they've failed to breed. Either way, from an genes eye view their health doesn't matter.
However I could imagine medicine being to improve significantly on physical health. What I think is much harder is reversing mental ageing.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
great. Please give us your name and credentials and start your own list. Until then, I will believe the other experts.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The Russian students will go to places like Deutschland, the U.K. Austria, and so on. I very much doubt they will be going to the U.S. People who have been to the U.S. know exactly what I am saying. Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Institute of Literacy Research Date: 4.28.2013 U.S. Illiteracy Statistics Data Percent of U.S. adults who can’t read 14 % Number of U.S. adults who can’t read 32 Million Percent of U.S. adults who read below a 5th grade level 21 % Percent of prison inmates who can’t read 63 % Percent of high school graduates who can’t read 19 %
This was also tried by Pakistani government starting from 2006. The government funded pupils to go abroad for higher studies (Masters and PhD), but again the catch was that they would need to come back and serve the country for several years. IMHO, it was an excellent initiative but not all of them return back to their homeland, and then with the change of government in Pakistan the funds were put on hold for the students who were already abroad.
Having experience with actual Russians with actual Russian high-schooling and degrees, I can safely say their education system is far better than Western countries.
In all seriousness, is it the educational system or the culture? I think we would have much better teachers, educated adults and test scores if we emphasized studying the core sciences and applying hard work instead of filling our brains with entertainment garbage like twerking and honey boo boo.
Do they have that nonsense in Russia?
Because there's no jobs.
No Family or Friends to threaten, then no go.... Is this what they mean by "properly motivated"?
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Just say you're gay, and they know about it at home, and if you go back to Russia the government will do bad things to you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
He probably means recent russian anti-gay laws.
Pinochet did this in Chile, and it worked out very well. The Chicago Boys were a product of this program.
Dmitri: [Dmitri rings in on the final question in the physics bowl] The answer is minus eight pi alpha.
Sheldon: Hang on, hang on a second, that is not our answer! What are you doing?
Dmitri: [wearily] Answering question; winning physics bowl.
Sheldon: How do *you* know anything about physics?
Dmitri: Here I am janitor. In former Soviet Union, I am physicist; Leningrad Polytechnica - Go Polar Bears.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Learn to judge your own self worth and achievements and the hell with everyone else.
There is always something someone can "hold against you". I am a southern white male who works in IT. I routinely work with people all over the US and even in other countries. Occasionally people think a southern white male must be stupid. I just do my job and prove them wrong.
Take that mom!
They thought I actually liked you when I left. ;)
It's perfectly reasonable. Lots of countries,usually small ones, do just this. They provide scholarships for overseas higher education with the stipulation that you return to the country and work there for a period of years. Thereby allowing the nation to receive some benefit for its investment in you.
It is a great system. It's great for the country and it affords the student an opportunity that they would never otherwise have.
"Have you considered that the problem might actually be with yourself?"
No, this is Slashdot, that never happens here, everyone's flawless. Especially me.
I think generation matters too, I find the Chinese students around here an absolute dream, they're smart, pleasant, polite, and put my native British brethren to shame but in some tourist cities like York you get a lot of older Chinese visitors that bring their habits with them, which are a bit of a culture shock for us Brits - spitting into tissues/cups all the time, refusing to queue and pushing past everyone waiting to be served and so forth.
The younger Chinese in University towns seem far more aware of cultural sensitivities and are treated with far more respect as a result than the older Chinese are in tourist towns where people perceive them as rude and having nasty habits.
Don't blame your bad experience and accept it as truth in all cases. It's simply not true.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Okay, so I still don't know which schools you're talking about. And, can you point to any kind of metric that backs up your claim?
Just another day in Paradise
Yes, 34th in mathematics, 37th in science, and 41st in reading, according to the latest PISA results http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PISA_2012_Tests. Sounds like the Russian education system only excels at instilling jingoism.
I think generation matters too, I find the Chinese students around here an absolute dream, they're smart, pleasant, polite, and put my native British brethren to shame but in some tourist cities like York you get a lot of older Chinese visitors that bring their habits with them, which are a bit of a culture shock for us Brits - spitting into tissues/cups all the time, refusing to queue and pushing past everyone waiting to be served and so forth.
there are rude, simple minded, and insensitive people from all cultures. do you know some people that are rude and pushy, and some people that are open minded and polite? well, same with other cultures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACM_International_Collegiate_Programming_Contest
Until the world opened up in 1991, it was USA only. Once that happened, you have a healthy mix for couple years and since 2000, it is Russia, China and Poland only at the top spot. But check the top 10 and you will see which universities are the best.
But just try to hire people even around Sillicon Valley, in my entire professional life I met only one Russian programmer that was not excelent and he was educated in US since 5th grade.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
It's not about rudeness it's just that that demographic of the Chinese population That is older and travels to UK tourist hotspots almost in its entirety outright lack the concept of cultural sensitivity when traveling compared to the younger generations. It does in itself seen to be a clash of cultures rather than an issue of inherent respect. The younger generations are much more westernised so cope with the transition better.
Forgot to say, as an aside it's worth noting that even the people of Hong Kong that was British administered for 100 years have been outright protesting at the same cultural clash, so even the most westernised Chinese recognise the issue.
Did you realize that ten percent of the people in Russia are also the stupidest in the world. Same for China and Poland.
When I was working for the University (of Virginia) in the late nineties I was helping Chinese PhD students with their theses. These people were absolutely brilliant, the top ten percent in the world.
Then I went to China. The top ten percent had already gone to the US and the west to study so the remainder were pretty normal, many were downright stupid. Hmmmm. Funny thing about that, people in the US thought that all the Chinese were as brilliant as the PhD students really were, but they aren't. Some of them not only can't read or write, they can't read numbers, add, subtract or even count.
I returned 5 years later and many of the first wave had returned, they definitely helped to bring the country up. Nonetheless, the educational system is .... well there are good things and bad things about it. Math is a good thing, critical thinking is a bad thing.
Is this the same in Russia, and in relation to what others are saying? Yes, of course. Just because the Russkies you've met are brilliant, so effin' what! They aren't exporting their idiots.
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
It seems to me that the entire discussion is missing the point. The point being that Russian mentality is oppressive. Part of it may be revealed as to how the West handled Germany, Italy and Japan after WWII and Russia handling its own allies. Corruption of government officials as well as the fact that citizens expect the government to take care of them may also play a role. The general society rule is that the stronger controls the weaker, but Russian environment seems to have unique undercurrents.
It seems to me that the entire discussion is missing the point. The point being that Russian mentality is oppressive. Part of it may be revealed as to how the West handled Germany, Italy and Japan after WWII and Russia handling its own allies. Corruption of government officials as well as the fact that citizens expect the government to take care of them may also play a role. The general society rule is that the stronger controls the weaker, but Russian environment seems to have unique undercurrents.