Off for money

The Ministry of Education and Science intends to spend up to 25 million rubles on the creation of an alternative rating of leading world universities, RIA Novosti reports. The tender application of the department posted on the public procurement website says that the compilation of the national rating of universities will be made "in order to increase the competitiveness of the Russian higher school."

"The creation of the national version of the rating must, among other things, be considered as one of the important tools to ensure the entry of at least five Russian universities to the first hundred leading world universities in accordance with the world ranking," the ministry said.

Participants in the competition are invited to develop a methodology for a comparative assessment of Russian and world universities, mechanisms for interaction with foreign universities and experts, the concept of promoting the Russian rating, as well as organize an international conference following the results of its compilation.

20 and 25 million rubles, which the agency is ready to allocate for the creation of the rating, is planned to be directed to the monitoring of domestic universities. This follows from the second application of the Ministry of Education and Science. Summing up the results of the competitions is scheduled for May 28 and 29.

Andrei Fursenko proposed to compile an alternative university rating of universities. In March 2012, he called the “tool of influence” international ratings, where Russian universities are all the less often. According to Fursenko, there should be no monopoly in the field of compiling university ratings. According to him, Russian experts are working on their universities rating.

Fursenko noted that it is necessary to “check the criteria”, according to which the rating of the universities of Times Higher Education was compiled. “I asked for data on what criteria has changed over the past year, and why it was according to these criteria that we turned out to be unsatisfactory. We must take into account the criteria and requirements that are presented to universities and specialists in the world. It is important to understand why we do not satisfy these requirements or why we do not submit relevant information on time. Unfortunately, our universities are not seriously related to how to give information about how they are doing,” - said Fursenko.