There has never been widespread acceptance in the USA of the notion that research institutes should somehow be separated from teaching institutions. In America, there is nothing similar to the Max Planck Institute or France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). Most of researchers in the US must also teach students and, in my opinion, that remains a strength of the American educational system (an exception must be made for the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study or the RAND Corporation — but I don’t necessarily think that they perform their functions better than universities as such)...

In countries like Singapore and China, universities seek to stimulate progress and social change. In France, the situation is somewhat different. I do not want to sound unpatriotic, but our universities find it very hard to adapt to the modern situation. The situation may be better in other European countries, such as Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, but in the countries of the Mediterranean, the situation also leaves much to be desired...

Russian universities present a wide range of educational institutions. There exist the classical universities that have deep historical roots, but there are very few of such universities. And then there are institutions of higher education that have become universities during the last two decades and they tend to remain largely specialised. Take, for instance, the University of Oil and Gas, or the Mining University (which, by the way, is not the only one having this name), and there are also universities of engineering and road transport. All of these educational institutions are called universities namely for one key reason. That is, according to the existing Russian law ‘On education’, the hierarchy of institutes of higher education is spelled out as follows: institutes, academies and universities. It is only natural that almost all institutes of higher education are striving to become universities. In order to achieve this objective, they have undertaken to develop new supplementary programs, including those in the humanitarian sphere...