How to Launch an IT Faculty at a Comprehensive University: Case of Higher School of Economics
Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science, National Research University Higher School of Economics
Associate Professor, Programme Academic Supervisor: Applied Mathematics and Information Science, National Research University Higher School of Economics
Head of Big Data Specialization, The Yandex School of Data Analysis, Yandex
National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) is well-known both nationally and internationally for its achievements in the sphere of economics and social sciences. For example, according to QS World University Rankings by Subject 2016 HSE became the best Russian university in such fields as Economics & Econometrics, Sociology, Business & Management Studies, and Accounting & Finance.
In March 2014 HSE — together with Yandex, major Russian IT company — opened its new Faculty of Computer Science (FCS). This came as a result of structural reforms in the university aimed at expanding existing faculties and creating “big” ones that would be responsible for the delivery of educational programs. So, FCS united several previously isolated departments that had to do with informatics, applied mathematics and software engineering. Yandex had wide experience of creating own educational programmes previously, so creating of FCS was stimulated by the company.
A number of basic questions need to be answered when creating a new faculty: whom will it train? What should students be taught and how? What spheres will alumni be sought after in? How can one recruit the best students and academic staff?
The issue of developing a competitive educational program is so extensive that there is a separate paper about is. We will try to answer all the other questions in the present paper using FCS as an example.
Who Does FCS Train?
Many young IT students in Russia start working in their third year already. It is therefore reasonable to ask: why study for four years at all? Indeed, training a “coder” takes two years but such a professional would only be able to solve basic tasks and could only start studying some specialized field.
FCS aims at training research engineers and software developers, i.e., specialists with deep knowledge in one of the areas of computer science who would be able to find new solutions and develop new algorithms. FCS alumni are expected to obtain a number of competencies that can be summed up as follows:
- Coding skills, i.e., the ability to develop an elaborate software product both individually and as part of a team;
- Knowledge of the branches of mathematics that are fundamental for computer science and ability to handle mathematical concepts;
- Mastery of a specific area of expertise and ability to solve tasks within a specific application domain;
- Fluency in English that is necessary for professional work in an English-speaking environment.
The first two mentioned items are definitive in terms of the learning basis that the students have to master first. Together with the English language this constitutes the core of what undergraduates study in the first two years. Years three and four are dedicated to specialized courses and research skills. Some of the courses can be taught in English, which allows students to gain practical experience in another language.
Understanding this logic makes it rather obvious who FCS aims at training. FCS alumni would be sought after in the IT industry as well as by other companies with large research or processing departments (banks, telecommunication providers, etc.). Such selection allows one to map out the companies whose vacancies could be analyzed when outlining requirements for alumni.
How to Recruit Talented Students?
Face-to-face contact is very important when working with prospective students. No leaflet will ever have the same effect as, for example, an open lecture by one of the academic staff where prospective students can see everything for themselves and ask all the questions they want.
In Russia, high school students who are good in math, informatics or physics traditionally show their best during various Olympiads and competitions — most of them but not all because not everyone has a taste for competitions. Therefore when the new faculty was launched, we promoted it not only during Olympiads, summer schools, camps, conferences, math tournaments, etc., but also organized presentations at math-oriented schools that were not part of any specific events. What is challenging about such work is that prospective students aren’t too interested in a typical presentation of any undergraduate program. In order to grab their attention we told them about some real-life problems that are solved with the help of machine learning, algorithms and other scientific fields and that are taught at our faculty in particular.
Besides presentations we also used other ways of reaching our prospective students, such as publications on relevant websites (codeforces.com, groups in social media) which are often visited by our target audience. We organized our own events for prospective students too, such as Computer Science Days (offering a broad range of lectures and workshops by industry professionals) and Open Days (when we talk in detail about our undergraduate programs, our students’ prospects, etc.).
It is also important to talk about our faculty not only with prospective students themselves but with people who have a significant impact on them too — i.e., their parents and school teachers. Parents need to understand what our alumni’s career prospects are — regarding both those who want to work in the industry and those who want to do research.
We were trying to work closely with the media in order to build up a brand within the university that at the time was not yet known well enough in the sphere of computer science and had to compete with such titans of engineering education in Russia as Moscow State University and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
Moreover, we organize our own conference for teachers from regional schools where we talk about modern technologies. It is important that our students participate in the conference and hold workshops for the teachers so that the latter can see who their current students will be studying with — should they be admitted to our faculty.
It has already been mentioned above that we work with high school students who participate in Olympiads and other kinds of competitions. We also work with school teachers who have helped organize such events and who teach the country’s best young people. We listen to their feedback about our ideas and about the way FCS educational process is structured and try to incorporate it in our work. We believe it is the best way to show that our faculty is willing to evolve and improve its quality.
How to Find Academic Staff?
The task of finding academic staff can be split into two subtasks: finding “theoreticians” — those who would teach math and theory of informatics, and “practicians” — those who would teach coding and applied courses in computer science. These are two quite separate tasks. Luckily, there are quite a lot of highly qualified theoreticians in Russia and in Moscow in particular with proven experience in academic advising and a desire to teach. Such people can either teach courses that are part of the curriculum or work within separate research groups and labs.
HSE has an efficient system of bonuses that are paid for articles published in leading international journals. Staff members whose students win in research competitions and who are awarded Best Teacher title as a result of student vote receive similar remuneration.
Experts working in the practical field are more difficult to engage into teaching process. Highly qualified professionals are usually employed in the industry or in centers of applied research, therefore it is difficult to get them to agree to regular classes. The university should be willing to provide comfortable working conditions for such people, i.e., employ them part time or offer contract work and understand that these people are not very keen on writing academic articles and can only devote limited time to teaching.
In this sense, what works well is the system of specialized departments that exist at various faculties and are founded by academic institutes or commercial companies. Practice-oriented teaching staff are seeking to create a group of active students who would be interesting to work with and who could be engaged in the former’s ongoing real-life projects. Our experience shows that some of the industry people have a drive for teaching and actually feel enthusiastic about it. It is pure luck when we manage to find such people and offer them a moderate teaching load in their area of interest.
What is common about the two subtasks mentioned is our students’ qualifications and their motivation to study the field they have chosen. Keen teachers are interested in working with students who are able to understand and to master what they are being taught. If a teacher encounters students who do not understand what they are being taught or do not want to study, no additional stimuli, including financial ones, will help keep him or her within the faculty for long.
In other words, by recruiting talented students we also to a large extent solve the problem of finding highly qualified academic staff.
Results
FCS currently has two undergraduate and four master’s programs. FCS is expanding: in 2016 we enrolled 370 freshmen vs 324 in 2015. The number of academic staff has nearly doubled in the past year and reached 150 teachers. In total, there are over 1200 students (including master’s and postgraduate) enrolled at FCS in the academic year 2016/2017.
It is also important that we now have better qualified students. For example, in 2014-2016 per subject GPA of the freshmen enrolled at Applied Mathematics and Information Science program for the Unified State Examination grew from 93.1 to 94.2 to 96.5 respectively, while at Software Engineering program it grew from 92.4 to 92.0, to 94.9.
Each year there are more and more winners of various Olympiads among the freshmen, and we work quite a lot with them. In 2014, FCS admitted 13 of the winners of the final round of the All-Russian Olympiad in Informatics, Physics and Mathematics, 14 in 2015, and 22 in 2016. Same goes for first-level Olympiads winners: in 2016 we admitted 96 such applicants, in 2015 — 101, and in 2016 — 141.