Education news at HSE University

On February 24, 2014, HSE launched its first course on the Coursera online education platform. Along with St. Petersburg State University and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, HSE was one of the first Russian universities to host a course on the platform. Now HSE ranks among the top ten universities with the highest number of courses available on the platform, offering 91 courses which have garnered 1.6 million subscriptions.

On February 18, the online round of the International Data Analysis Olympiad (IDAO) officially finished. The Data analysis competition is organized by the HSE Faculty of Computer Science and Yandex with the support of Sberbank. This year 1287 teams from 78 countries took part in the online round.

On February 12 at the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, HSE and five institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) signed agreements to collaborate in the field of scientific education. The institutions have pledged to contribute to the development of new faculties of chemistry as well as biology and biotechnology at HSE.

Felipe Vaca Ramirez and Paco Arevalo Reyes, both from Ecuador, are second-year students in HSE’s Master’s programme in ‘Applied Statistics with Network Analysis’. Having heard about Russia’s rich mathematical tradition and the high academic standing of HSE, they both decided to study in Moscow despite how far away from home it is. Felipe and Paco share a background in economics, and the HSE programme’s focus on statistics and data and network analysis was a huge draw for them. Affordable tuition fees and multicultural environment were additional bonuses.

LG Electronics and the Higher School of Economics have announced the launch of a special collaborative educational project. A new computer classroom will provide students of engineering, industrial design, and computer programming the opportunity to study the most modern tools and methods of design using equipment designed for rapidly developing disciplines and the higher technological demands of their results. With a 21:9 aspect ratio, these monitors are currently the most conducive to solving such complex tasks at work and in school.

Starting February 14, HSE will offer a unique interdisciplinary online project ‘Megacities of the Future’ on Webinar.ru platform. The webinars will run over the course of 13 weeks with one lecture a week. One of the lecturers, Benito Juarez, the founder of the first Fab Lab in South America and the Latin America Fab Lab Network, has told us about the project and has also talked about contemporary trends in architecture, urbanism, and sociology.

The two universities have signed a student exchange agreement. Now HSE students will be able to spend a semester in Shenzhen, while Chinese students get to spend a semester at HSE.

From January 3 to 20, 23 students from three American universities took part in a special winter programme held for the third time at HSE University – St Petersburg. We asked them many questions, including what they thought about Russia before coming here, what they would take back home, and one of the eternal questions – Moscow or St Petersburg?