Our graduates are the most popular specialists: interview of the USUE Rector Yakov Silin to the magazine Regions of Russia

On the eve of the opening of the admission campaign 2017-2018 at universities, Rector of Ural State University of Economics (USUE) Y. Silin gave an interview to our magazine. 

 - Yakov Petrovich, what will your university begin the next academic year with? what could new entrants expect? 

- Today we have 20 traditional training areas for bachelor's degree studies and 9 - for maser’s.  We established three new departments last year, including the Department of Logistics, this is a very interesting area.  The Sverdlovsk region and the Ural region occupy a unique geostrategic position within the Eurasian continent.  Here there is a colossal concentration of transport and financial infrastructure, which requires high-skilled specialists of logistics.  We have developed a four-year bachelor’s program and two-year master’s program and hired a good team of faculty members. 

 Besides, we established the Department of Economics of Social Sphere.  This is the economics of health, education, social protection, sports, culture, and youth policy.  This is, in reality, more than 4,000 institutions.  The regional Minister of Health has set before us the task of forming the Department of Economics of Health Management.  We are also carrying out the most important task of restoring the training of engineers. We always were the university of economic and technological profile.  These are "operators of food production," that is, personnel for the agro-processing complex of the food industry.  For example, if we take a dairy, a bakery, enterprises for processing vegetables and fruits,  someone has to service these up-to-date technological lines.  This means that they need engineers who know food technologies.  Only we had such an area of training, and we restored it.  We met with veterans, refined programs, and created a new laboratory complex.  Now our professionals are in great demand. 

We have the Institute of Management and Information Technologies and train specialists in economic security.  We teach land management and land cadaster.  This year we opened a new master’s degree program - International Management in English.  There is a special Department of Business Foreign Language, it is designed not for foreigners but for our students because the  Sverdlovsk region cooperates with more than 160 countries.  There are several thousand joint ventures here, many foreign ones, and if we give a good professional training but a person does not know a foreign language, then it is the problem.  We teach six foreign languages.  The most popular specialists at the federal level, even in Moscow, are our graduates.  80 percent of them find work in one’s degree field immediately after getting a degree. 

We significantly increased the requirements for the quality of teachers’ work, introduced a score-rating system and very favorable conditions to pursue science.  A teacher should write articles, speak at conferences and forums.  We train high-skilled specialists.  People could complete bachelor’s and then master's degree programs and, most importantly, postgraduate and doctoral schools.  We opened new educational programs, which no university in the Urals had.  A new Dissertation Council on food technologies began to function.  A new scientific journal Food Industry has been established.   A new electronic scientific journal is on the way, we are establishing it together with the technical university of UMMC. 

Together with South Ural State University, we opened a new Dissertation Council on economics, consisting of three disciplines: finance, marketing, and management.  We have 4 institutes, and there are disciplines in Dissertation Councils for all of them: for the Institute of Food Technologies and Service, for the Institute of Finance and Law, for the Institute of Management and Information Technologies,  and for the Institute of Economics - in Regional Economics, Industry, and Logistics (there are only 5 such councils in the country and in food technologies - even less).  We have our own college, the level of teaching in which significantly exceeds the level of teaching in other ones due to candidates and doctors of sciences in the staff.

Of great importance is the state of facilities that accompany the educational process.  For example, we have repaired all the equipment of our Recreation Center.  Now we are preparing for a thorough overhaul of the sports complex. There will also be new storage facilities; we will repair auditoriums in two buildings. We plan to purchase a minimum of 225 computers with installed software.  We are expanding museum funds. We also deal with the camp at Tavatuy. 

Thus, we are strengthening our scientific and educational facilities, so to interest people to study at our University.  If you want to get a high-quality economic education, you should come to us without experimenting with other universities.  We are the only specialized economic university in the Urals. 

- This year your university is 50 years old.  How will you celebrate the anniversary? 

- Yes, in 1994 our Institute (SINH) was awarded the status of a university, and we are confirming it for 23 years, preserving and increasing our base.  We have approached the jubilee as a powerful independent university.  And the level of USUE is growing.  Since September 10, we start to carry out events devoted to the 50th anniversary of the University.  First, this is a meeting with veterans.  We will tell them about everything, we will fete them during the entire festive period.  Several scientific conferences will be held, we will open the capsule, which our predecessors had laid for us. ... In general, it will be a great program. 

On the eve of the opening of the admission campaign 2017-2018 at universities, Rector of Ural State University of Economics (USUE) Y. Silin gave an interview to our magazine.