how well russian universities compete with their foreign counterparts. hello again a welcome to spotlight. on r.t. i'll bring our vent today my guest in the studio is alan goodman russia is trying hard to modernize its education system and bring it up to international standards but some experts believe this would only harm the traditions of russian higher education they advocate russia going its own way so what about an outsider's view of where an average russian student stands against foreign counterparts here is the president and c.e.o. of the institute of international education alan good.

even though russian specialists are valued around the world the russian higher education isn't popular with foreign students only three percent of students who go to study abroad choose a russian university this has become a serious concern for russian educators they want a bigger share in the international educational programs russian universities are educating their students in accordance with the european high education accords this tries to standardize the quality of education throughout europe but for some russians that's not enough and a debate is underway on the future of tired cation within the country. oh mr goodnow welcome to the show thank you it's thank you very much for being with us thank you well first of all i wanted to ask you to comment on what president obama said recently that the us president he said that that education and innovation will be the currency of the twenty first century and therefore i quote

we will expand exchange programs and increase. scholarships like the one that brought my father to america and well it's and that's what about him said could you explain this please well you know i understand it is far the better but what does it mean saying that the currency of the twenty first century it's how all of our societies fuel you know variation it's how we better educate our people and that's how we prepare them for not only global citizenship but work in a global marketplace education today can do all of that for all of our people you are sure that that about a really means it when he says that this probably will be well today there's nothing more important for america than the dollar but he says tomorrow it will be education is that true well the way sometimes you get dollars or rubles as to get better educated and the more education you have the more chances you are to prepare

to earn more for your family and more for your country so i think president obama really means what he's what he's saying and he really believes in exchanges he is one of the few american presidents that studied abroad well you said that the more the more educated you are the moment he may quote not always and you know and you know this is true but you want to say together with obama that in the twenty first century this will be a rare exception and what an educated person will be able to make big bucks in that trip well this century is one where we're all living in a knowledge economy we're all living in a global marketplace and we're working today to create the jobs of the future and we're preparing students to have the jobs of the future and the only way to do that is through education and more you have of it the better. you sector of state clinton once urged graduates to become and i quote this special envoy is all of

your ideas as a citizen a master's using your personal and prefer. russia lives to forge global partnerships do you believe that really student change may do more for and the standing between people of different countries different nations than any other diplomacy traditional official policy i do and i think you need both the will and the way secretary clinton was talking about the world it becomes representatives of your society representatives of your idea and exchanges the way in which we share that with other people but also learn from them so i think you have to have young people ready and willing to study abroad and ready and willing to have that experience and and you have to have exchanges increasing so that they can do that well let's listen to the young people who decided that education abroad was essential to their future life and career sports life he never did any of the reports from moscow state university. and is aspiring to

become a pro in the i.p.o.'s from russia which to me and to the market economy twenty years ago initial public offerings are stupid why do anything to improve his understand you know andrea went to new york who to do want to lie just stock exchange i was able to communicate with. professionals that versailles helped me in terror and violence my knowledge i get new ideas for my fitness and is one of the thousand students who take advantage of the moscow state university exchange programs every year some of them will eventually be rewarded with a very special kind of diploma a double one and we will get the double diploma means you started in two universities in two different countries and you're a dictation is acknowledged in both these countries it means more opportunities for those who received it could mean you're still. the university staff believe

a mood in the globalized world makes going abroad for a good cation on the troops. the reasons that we interview is shared by sponsor a u.s. student who is doing a degree in russian studies in came to my school who some on the ground experience obviously for the study around the world and i think it gives a lot more perspective for somebody because you can be educated at a college and not really actually be educated if you can understand somebody else's point of view and going abroad and studying in different countries or different universities really gives you that opportunity spence's friend grigori was wounded you with ceasar grew up in the who was saying can you read the boast of a global educational experience and is able to compare systems in their response of the planet's united says system educational system is very individual you pick your courses you pick your glasses as far as joining goes i think it's more traditional i enjoy russian system more because it's more familiar to me i'm close to my heart

while studying in england of the school in the ration project and is now considering taking part something he would never have been able to do if he'd never travelled in spite of his education. hugh said recently in one of the interviews pursuing an education in a foreign country allows a young person to develop the skills necessary to become an effective and productive global citizen and quit. does that mean the studying abroad makes a person more competitive on the labor market than a person advantage occasionally here locally in his own country it makes a person mark imperative but also more compassionate and more confident. we're going abroad you learn a lot about self-reliance you learn about your ability to adapt to

a new environment and you learn to work with people from. different walks of life and cultures and that's what the global marketplace is today labor forces are multicultural or multinational you can only learn that in the classroom you have to get out of the classroom and go to another culture and work and study in that environment as well well traditionally people want people like myself who got good educational one i'm a trained journalist they they started a career and that was their trade for the rest of their lives and i guess this was pretty much the same for everybody. my generations and generations and my father and grandfather and someone today it is changing and people people are telling me that no way that he or i will not be able to survive this way be able to be successful you should undergo training every additional training every other couple

of five years six years and change change your trade change your profession find something else in order to be successful is it true and and is it true that in the twenty first century people have to spend more money more time on training than before there's no rule that education stops when you're twenty one or twenty two or when you get your first degree or second degree so we really believe education is a lifelong process your field is journalism you have had to learn many different media you had to learn about many different revolutions had to learn about many different places even if you focused only on russia because russia is affected by things all over the world so you can still practise the same profession but you have to educate yourself in it every day well but we mean my generation we did learn a lot but we learned a lot while working well we started journalism as junior guy somewhere in

a paper with a radio station and then we learned from our colleagues will learn from. but but we never thought ok i'll quit for here and i'll go to china to learn something new and then i'll come back and get a better job is this the way people should do it today yes i think it is a new paradigm and some new school of thought. there's nothing wrong with the old school of thought of continuing to get degrees and continue to be educated but however you do it and i think you need to have the international be part of it whether you're a journalist or an engineer or a doctor i don't know how traditionally you are you self but did that does it make you happy or does it make you sad that people people are not becoming super professionals in what they do but rather always look around maybe there's something better something some someplace where i can earn more some people are becoming super professionals but they're getting a global perspective and i think that's ok with other people yes you're right

they'll change their job their career their direction many times during the course of their life and one of the good things about the education systems your country and my country has is it can be there for them. well it's more fun of course changing your way of life well every once in a while but but that that i think that doesn't really move progress. forward because you know that in order to find something new to to to develop something you should you should stay and do what you're doing for years and years and years before you start being a locomotive any run trade is that true but you can't really today be a super professional a super expert if you're confined to only one country and only one discipline knowledge is multi-disciplinary now the best professionals the best experts the next people that will win the bill prizes probably are multidisciplinary probably

have lived and worked in several countries. just into the global economy and that's what really being a super professional is all about you the c.e.o. of the institute of international education tell me do you think new technologies can allow people to get an international education be educated in foreign universities without leaving their house i mean can i see technology replace actually going to lecture is seminars mixing with kids and living in canberra and so on you know i think you have to have that initial experience you know you have to know how you react to different food different people a different place and in then you can use ip and distance learning to continue the relationship to widen the relationship but but if you personally don't know how you're going to react in another situation you can't learn that just on camera says our government president and c.e.o.

on this that huge international education spotlight will be back shortly afterward take a break so stay with us we'll continue and less than a minute. couldn't

take three. three. three. three. three. mostly brown video for your media project c.e.o. don darty dot com.

welcome back to spotlight i'm now going to have and today our guest is alan goodman who is the c.e.o. of institute of international education. can you tell us which countries today are the most popular destinations for for its national scholars well we think of you know really the big five for the united states the united kingdom france germany and for the fifth country you can take a pic now it could be australia it could be canada could be china but those country is that i mentioned the g five the g eight account for about eighty percent eighty percent of all move all the you know move that's right. all of the countries outside the western world well except china which is pretty exotic bad but it is popular that that's our competitive well education wise you bet and in a sense every country is competitive because it's the experience of being in

another place that can make you a different profession. but there are about two thousand americans here in russia there are about two thousand americans studying in egypt those are considered higher education the universities higher education those are exotic destinations they're just as meaningful as going to something like china because what you're doing is understanding a great nation an old civilization and how you relate to that well europe has already introduced a standard of education called the balon us system the russians are talking a lot about introducing it here in this country and we've already made steps well not everybody likes the many people disagree but still we are moving in the direction do you think they should be a global standard of education should it be standardized i think the transfer of credits of the movement of students and scholars across borders ought to be

liberalized standardize something that institutions and governments commit to sharing. we have america poorly understand the belong your process we poorly understand the nature of the degrees and it begins with the fact that your high schools are longer than our high schools so it will take some time for us to be comfortable with the degree from europe but the fact that you're trying to standardize you're trying to make mobility easier if you're trying to encourage people from going going to different countries and i think that's something that should be a global standard. recent reports by the institute of international education which you present here have found that there were notable increases in the number of u.s. students going to study in a less traditional this nation is what you were talking about there fifteen of the top twenty five destinations were outside western europe and nineteen countries

were english is not a primary language so why. makes these countries attractive for our for my for americans because americans should be i mean i mean american kids they should be pretty realistic they you may be thinking of of gathering around i mean this is introducing yourself to foreign cultures but kids think about how to have at a farm a good job how to make money so why are they going about maybe the chinese example want something else well your first question was about the global economy and the knowledge economy that's taking place outside of great britain that's taking place outside of france that is india that is china that is egypt and so americans are very conscious of the need to understand those places so i think that's why they're going to non more and more to nontraditional destinations and they ought to because that's where the global economic action is. in the most prestigious university

rankings that we see and that we can take a look at the russian education looks quite many ocular and it's a story set for the russians because we we are used to especially the people that were raised in the soviet union as myself we're used to knowing that the russian education system is one of the best in the world what's happened is there's something wrong with the rankings is there something wrong with the standards we're talking about war is the sense of something really wrong with the russian system since you here in russia maybe maybe you can tell us i'd say just wait a minute given the and we've been waiting for twenty years and and it's not being becoming any better but i was just with here your minister for education and science and he and all the rector's i met with hooting the rector of moscow state mentioned the fact that government is investing now heavily in education that's the

beginning. and that hasn't been the case here in. isn't the case in many countries that's why they're not on the list but i think in five years russia will be on all what's called the league tables people will see that the twenty nine designated research universities are making major contributions to the world especially in science and that's what's going to put us on the range put our schools on the rankings and your schools on the rankings so so you think it's underfunding because of the perestroika and russian economy now that it's just the lack of money in there in the universities and this is the reason for the drawbacks we have got money isn't everything but if you ask an american university leader what are the three most important ingredients it's usually money money and money three dollars dollars cents and he said maybe somebody chinese you are. and you know our own system the great universities are built on huge and almonds fun research that fun

cutting edge teaching in the production of knowledge other countries are catching up with. your governments investment is going to make a very good start at this this is a very educated culture very smart students we send our kids here to have math in moscow because you're going to actually because your university teaching of math is superior to ours in many can you can you name. a couple of russian universities which you think should be should be among the ranks among the best in the world i think you deserve to be i think you'll see moscow state and st peter's third and below and before too long the twenty nine universities designated for research in which the government is investing in next on tell me this new program i think that's going to that's going to change the less you mention math what other areas which would you recommend for international students to come to russia where we

have. good maybe even better than that there's russia's famous for physics for nanoparticles research for optics in addition to the fact that you've got a rich culture that's given the world. dostoyevsky tolstoy the place of checkoff so there are so many things here that people from other cultures interested in knowledge can learn but i think the real growth is going to be in the science and tech in math area and what the russians mainly go to to study in the us what they mainly what what sciences are rushing up to because. i get that impression that most of the people going to america want to study business business administration is it true or maybe something else probably half are doing the sciences and half are doing business. your graduate students in

physics are becoming our graduate students in physics. there's a tremendous flow in the math field between the two countries so i think you'll see that continue but business is very important subject now that attracts students to america we go abroad to study it and i think you'll see that growth continue. do you have a remedy against brain drain. it's called is there a method to his brain you bet it's called globalization and it's no position which is what causes brain injury no it isn't actually what solves the problem because now you can be educated in a foreign country and then you look for a job and you realize that job is waiting for you back home because you have the advanced skills and it can be used in that economy so instead of brain drain we are seeing brain gain in many of the places like india and china were a decade before it was only a flow one way so globalization is producing jobs it's also producing

a way to attract people back to their home countries you said you met the russian reactors of the universities the minister of higher education well they should have told you a lot about about this need and the vision project well what do you think this this skulk of zero educational center a special place designed for for education and for. getting to give that we're bringing together people from students from all over the world cannot solve the problem of the brain drain that russia russia is facing today i think the total set of activities the juror minister is undertaking with the new draft law on higher education the openness of your rector's all of that's required special center is special programs and the laws are all that is going to help with brain circulation you also have

a rich of russian intellectuals and professors in america in europe and you're attracting them back as well you're attracting their students back to russia that's also going to create a flow back here but but the meal real model we need to look at is not is not just a one way flow but a continuous circulation just like we talked earlier of continuous education and how do you do that i mean this can conclude that then you keep your borders open you encourage your students to study abroad you encourage them to come home you encourage them to go out again because knowledge is also global that's what we're learning from the internet and and so the sites where it's produced exist all over the world and what we should be doing is keeping our doors our minds and our borders open. thank you thank you very much for being with us and to just a reminder that my guest today on the show was alan that he's the president and c.e.o.

of the institute of international education and that's it for now from all of us here if you want to have your sales spotlight or maybe you have someone in mind he would think i should think through next time then just drop me a line i'll bring up the dots are new and let's keep spotlight and move it back with more first comments on what's going on in and outside of russia and so then stay in our teeth and take it thank you.

syrian government forces launched their biggest sweep against protesters in the northwest of the country blocking their escape to turkey. licensed to kill israeli

special forces get the green light to shoot at palestinian in the pentlands protesters. and seeking solutions russia and ukraine agreed to talks pushes for discounted gas supplies on able to cope with the current pricing levels. in broadcasting live direct from the heart of moscow this is r.t. thomas glad to have you with us syrian security forces a launch their biggest sweep against anti-government protesters trying to flee turkey it comes as human rights organizations claim thousands have been rounded up and hundreds killed in the last month alone meanwhile russia is rallying members of the un security council to encourage the sides to stop violence and start negotiations but the u.s. and its.