From the life of grants

Internal grants. St. Petersburg University

All over the world, the work of scientific groups is highly dependent on the grant system. The presence of a good line of grants allows you to quickly and effectively achieve point financing of the most powerful groups conducting the most relevant research.

However, it is quite difficult to create such a set of grants. By and large, this has not yet been achieved in Russia. Roll and roll off the waves.
They will give out huge grants to young scientists in the framework of the RFFI (however, the organization of the competition raises a lot of questions). That, on the contrary, will be canceled grants for trips at the conference. They will give out large “Officials”, then strong groups will not receive grants “A”, and if they receive, then the amounts are ridiculous. Then something else will happen.

With such a turbulent life, it would seem logical if large players in the scientific and educational field (Academy, leading universities and research centers) launched a system of internal grants optimized for their tasks and resources. It is not bonuses, not allowances, but grants. But there are few examples of such grant systems. Therefore, having heard that there is something like that at St. Petersburg University, I decided to ask my colleagues to tell about it.

Then a surprise was waiting for me. In their answers by e-mail, my colleagues gave me a bunch of reasoned negativity about the “so-called” (according to them) grant system at St. Petersburg State University, but they refused to write something for the newspapers under various pretexts, which she clearly heard: “I would not change anything, and I would make problems for myself.” It was proposed to seek answers directly to the chiefs of different levels, but this is not at all what seemed important and interesting as the first step.

The main impression of the private answers of colleagues is this. On the one hand, the system that exists in the St. Petersburg State University is difficult to call honest and effective, if we talk about grants for fundamental research.

The examination is not good enough, and it can be ignored when making a final decision: there are quotas, priority, etc. On the other hand, there is a tangible benefit from trips to trips (especially young researchers). But in general, according to colleagues from St. Petersburg State University, the internal grant system does not work well.

I managed to get only one detailed comment on this topic for the press - Alexander Holtygin. We also give a brief comment by Alexander Fradkov. We hope that the discussion about internal grant systems in different institutions will be continued in future numbers. We are waiting for your materials.

Sergey Popov