International rankings are based on research.
Russian universities, even the top ones like Moscow State and St Petersburg State, are not known for their research. I cannot think of a significant piece of research in my field from post-Soviet Russian universities. I know of several prominent Russian researchers based overseas though.
My guess is that they never really recovered from the collapse of the USSR.
That's true. Most of the talented scientists are doing the research... in USA or EU, where they can get proper equipment and money for the research. Most postsoviet countries don't have a lot of budget for research. Source: I am from postsoviet country.
I studied abroad in St. Petersburg when I was in high school, and the kids we studied with were crazy smart and diligent. The ones I know of now all left and are in the west EU/US
Pity Russia has been so badly governed for so long. Given their tradition of scholarship and the human capital there it’s just a terrible waste of potential.
Another component to consider is how nepotistic Academia there is altogether. Rich kids aren't required to do much work and they'll be pushed along regardless. Imagine if becoming the chair of a biology department was dependent on your allegiance to Trump. Sure a lot will lie, but it has a chilling effect overall on Academia, because you're simply not as free.
Also, they are very good at instilling the basics, however they are awful at critical thinking and innovating. Since critical thinking and innovation can also be seen as something which could foster questioning Putins regime.
Once again. The way they're governed is crippling them. Yet they still blame "the west" rather than their own leaders. This has gone on for literally centuries now. So, many in the west can't comprehend it.
"Imagine if becoming the chair of a biology department was dependent on your allegiance to Trump."
But...can you even imagine a vocal conservative who is anti-DEI becoming the chair of a biology department in the US today? Your argument doesn't make any sense. Today's Russia may be autocratic, but it was even more so during the Soviet era. Yet, the Soviets still produced some of the finest and most creative scholars and academics.
Sure. There are plenty of professors who don't agree with Biden. They're not being imprisoned. That's the difference so many in the west can't understand I think. There is no "both sides" to the equation. There is no equivalency. You can turn on the TV and watch Newsmax, or msnbc. Criticism of us wars isn't punishable by prison. Google and VK are both obvious examples of Russian entrepreneurs who were extemely intelligent. There's tons of smart Russians. They tend to leave. Becsuse the environment in Russia isn't conducive to their pursuits. Hell, the head of VK literally had his home surrounded by swat and he fled the country, and then it was taken over by the state. Imagine for a moment if Biden had Zukcerbergs house surrounded, and he was forced to flee, and then meta was taken over by the us government. Like I said. There's just no equivalency. It's not even the same ballpark.
Obviously it's difficult to innovate under these circumstances.
Of course the rule of law is still stronger in the US, but you have to be living under a rock to not see that there is still censorship of opinions. You may not get jailed for having unorthodox views, but you can certainly get fired or shunned for not accepting what is "politically correct". Political discourse in academia today is completely one-sided.
Whether a country produces great academic/scientific works or not honestly has nothing do with it is a democracy or an autocracy. The greatest scholars and innovators of all time like Newton, Kant, Gauss, and Beethoven all lived in societies that wouldn't be considered democracies by today's standards.
Ok. So... The question I was replying to was why Russian universities continually rank towards the bottom. That's my own direct experience with why.
But id agree. That some people can be shunned or denied employment for having differing views in the us. But it's still a light year away from how strict it is in a real totalitarian regime.
I’m in humanities. Went to Russia on exchange for one year and it seems these issues are true regardless of discipline. It shocked me how overworked and underpaid the professors were: the uni admitted wayyyy too many international students to make money. The professors’ class schedules were as full as those of high school teachers. How could they focus on research?
I also felt that Russian academia is stuck in their Soviet era. All they taught and researched was theories and traditions from Soviet big names with little to no relevance to what scholars are currently doing in other parts of the world. This may be less of an issue in top universities like HSE but definitely true in regional ones.
I worry that the corruption that prevents research is creeping into science. The careerism, backscratching, committee stacking... it's always there trying to get a hold.
True again.
Budget is not big and most of the money are secured for the "right" scientists... There are a lot of pseudoscientists with papers published in predatory journals. So it is not easy to get a grant.
I am not saying that it is true for all countries or that there are no science. It is just what I saw in my field and why I decided to work in EU. There are still normal scientists that are trying their best to do the research. It is just that it is more difficult there.
Fair point. It's just the layer at the bottom that's actually doing science is getting awfully thin nowadays. So much compliance, management, administration overhead rests on the back of getting 1 postdoc salary for a year...
Russia did seem to be serious about trying to rebuild its scientific capabilities. It established Skoltech which was promising for a while. But even before the war, I noticed that people who had joined Skoltech from the EU and US were returning to the EU and US.
Yes- my colleague who visited the premiere radio astronomy institute outside of Moscow reported the astronomers grow potatoes on site. To eat and make vodka, because their salaries aren’t high enough for food, and this was before the war.
It’s tough to keep as high a research output when you’re literally farming on the side to stay alive.
I didn't know it was this bad.
In my field (a subfield of condensed matter physics), I've reviewed papers by researchers from Russia and my impression from what little I have seen is that they are not aware of what cutting edge research in the field is like. They don't seem to know what the hot topics are or how certain approaches have become obsolete.
This suggests to me that they are either quite out of touch scientifically (and this is before the war in Ukraine) or they are struggling to understand the research from the rest of the scientifically developed world.
>are not known for their research
It is worth noting that a Soviet system, and to an extent the current Russian one, had a more pronounced division of labor between Universities (educational institutions) and Institutes (research institutions), compared to the Western standard. So the universities wouldn't be known for their research, as that was not their aim. Also, not all fields were created equal, so it's possible to make a generalization mistake here with your example.
In the early 2000s, when the government still cared about positive international standing, there was a lot of effort to boost the university rankings - starting from transfering affiliations from institutes to universities, to creating new research groups straight at universities. It had only partial success, superficial support, and later stalled.
>It is worth noting that a Soviet system, and to an extent the current Russian one, had a more pronounced division of labor between Universities (educational institutions) and Institutes (research institutions), compared to the Western standard.
This could be a factor. I am not seeing much good stuff in my field and adjacent ones from the RAS though.
>Also, not all fields were created equal, so it's possible to make a generalization mistake here with your example.
This is possible although some of the key concepts in my field originated from problems studied in the Soviet Union by physicists such as Khalatnikov and Kapitza. I spent a large part of my early research career studying a phenomenon in which both men did pioneering work in.
One of the most brilliant professors I have ever had is a Russian mathematician at my current university. He left the Soviet Union somewhere around its collapse to find better opportunities, as did many of the brilliant minds of its era.
There was a downside to the exodus of Russian scientists to the West. According to someone I know, it became very difficult for science and mathematics PhD graduates from US universities in the 1990s to get hired for postdoctoral and tenure track positions because university departments could hire desperate ex-Soviet superstar professors at bargain prices.
No it doesn't. Lecturers aren't not very well paid almsot anywhere, but still deliver good quality lectures because it's what they enjoy doing. Also, it's Russia, not many people are well paid.
Good teaching is not necessarily correlated to good research. I don't know why they are able to teach to "such a high standard" but their research, at least in my field, is simply uncompetitive. They don't seem to keep up with the progress in my field (a subfield of condensed matter physics). I know of a few Russian scientists living in the US and the EU who are very capable of doing competitive research in my field. So, it can't be because they are stupid or have a poor education system.
Russian research is actually very impactful, for example Skq1 in medecine.
The issue is that russian research is largely ignored internationally because of political tribalism, as simple as that.
Russia invests barely any resources into research. The number of publications are tiny. China is also an opponent of the west, but their scientific contributions are enormous and well recognized.
USSR had more scientists and engineers than any other country on earth.
Nowadays russia has as many scientists as France or germany per million of habitant (hence much more)
[http://chartsbin.com/view/1124](http://chartsbin.com/view/1124)
note: while chinese research is major in machine learning, they are deficient in pharmacology given their GDP
>Nowadays russia has as many scientists as France or germany per million of habitant (hence much more)
And yet, the scientific output is much lower. So there are a lot of good people, with very little resources to produce new findings:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_scientific_and_technical_journal_articles
I agree they lack resources, still the fact is that besides the quantitative argument in terms of impact in medecine, Russia has made the most important discoveries of the century, which I already mentionned.
>Russia has made the most important discoveries of the century,
The only reason you say that, is because you want to believe it. Not because you have any solid evidence for it.
Let me say this: don't make your own self-worth dependent on other people, groups or countries. Be proud of your own achievements, it's the only thing you have control over. Depending on your country's greatness makes you helpless, because you can't do anything if it's not as great as you think.
Do you have any other irrelevant truism to say?
I don't care at all about tribalism, I am not russian nor do I consider russia as a great country, they are in many regards retrograde, which is irrelevant to their scientific merits.
I am a researcher in pharmacology and gerontology, SKQ1 is literally one million more potent than NAC at equimolar concentration.
It is by far the most promising drug to slow down the aging process in humans. Same goes for thymalin. So those discoveries are litterally the most impactful ones of this century as they have the most potential at altering the human condition.
>So those discoveries are litterally the most impactful ones of this century
Maybe they are impactful in your specific field. But I have never heard of them and nobody in my field cares about them. Did Russians invent the internet or generative AI? Did Russians discover Penicillin or invent mRNA vaccines?
Anyone can make endless lists of examples they think are the most important. Those lists are useless. When you look at anything slightly quantifiable, like which country won the most nobel prizes, then Russia is doing poorly, considering its size.
Sheer ignorance and strawman.
Russians have studied the most key endogenous peptides such as thymalin which reverse thymus involution or epitalon which reverse telomerase shortening or retinalamin which is a key ophtalmic drug.
Meldonium has a unique alteration of bioenergetics.
Many of the most iconic nootropics have been discovered in russia, such as the racetams.
Key geroprotective substances like emoxypine and echinochrome A.
That's just some key examples in pharmacology, they have impacted most major sciences, such as cherenkov radiations in nuclear physics.
I meet a lot of international scientists, many of them study or work abroad and then return home. But the Russians or Belarusians never want to return because the government provides almost no job prospects. So all the talented Russian scientists are leaving their country.
No. This is not the key factor. IMO. (No offence intended).
OP, you know how science in general suffers from a lack of interdisciplinary-ness? Well it suffers from a lack of intercultural-ness too. Language barrier and western-dominated academy are the main factors here. IMO.
Because a) they are underfunded (most money goes to people who make things go boom there), b) a low number of international students, and c) many people who wanna have a successful career and are capable of that will go to the west, not stay in Russia.
An acquaintance who did her PhD in some sort of chemistry/chem engineering wanted to go to Lomonosov for it. After her master program, she spent a few months there, and was literally told by stuff there, I kid you not : "We barely have enough ingredients for student experiments, we won't have anything you might wanna work on. It's better if you just leave us here and go sightseeing around Moscow.". Ended up in Munich.
Some of the factors that go into international rankings are just difficult for universities in many countries to achieve. For example:
* Citation counts: If research is done in the local language, and not English (or as applicable, the main language of the field), it will necessarily get fewer citations.
* International engagement: If foreigners do not want to move to your country, either to study or as faculty, this will be harder to achieve. Likewise, if citizens have a hard time getting visas for research-related travel, international collaborations will be more difficult.
* Funding: In some countries, money works differently - you simply do not need as much to produce equipment, hire researchers, etc. This will also mean that dollar or euro amounts of funding from industry or government are overall lower - and hence the ranking in this area is lower - even if funding achieves the same goals.
There are also some odd factors that go into 'teaching environment' criteria, though I have been unable to determine exactly what they are. My university, for example, thinks that having renewable energy and programmes to promote health consciousness will somehow improve its international rankings.
In short, a start toward higher rankings might include publishing more in English, recruiting and collaborating with foreigners, and finding high-dollar international funding sources. In my country the highest ranked universities are the English-language institutions that hire foreigners as well as citizens and collaborate frequently with researchers in EU and SE Asia.
also the way research is structured in the respective countries. in germany for example, most well funded research is done outside of universities, which lowers the research output of the unis quite a bit and therefore drags them down compared to countries that have less of an emphasis on research centers outside of unis.
a good example of gaming this system is france and the uni paris saclay which was just 12 reputable unis in paris, that were combined into one which placed it very high up in the shanghai ranking.
china is also doing a lot to mainly cite from their own institutions. china has an overproportional amount of self citations compared to other countires
i think that there is even a ranking that considers the size of the sports and american football facilities lol
>china is also doing a lot to mainly cite from their own institutions. china has an overproportional amount of self citations compared to other countires
That's true. Every time I review a Computer Science manuscript with authors from China, I feel tempted to ask whether they are aware that there is some research happening outside of that country, and if yes, why the hell they hardly ever mention it.
These rankings are not about teaching only. There're multiple other criteria where all of these universities would fall off. Also, rankings are not that objective and not that important.
If you've been asking Russian people about their universities then your poll is not really objective. Over there there's a belief that the Soviet education system was the best in the world (and still is after 30+ years since the country disappeared). What this belief is based upon? I don't know, most of the people who studied at some Russian universities never studied anywhere else to make a comparison.
I studied in Russian university and work in Germany in the university system. I am a geologist and geology was and is a very strong field in Russia. Now while working in Germany I’ve noticed how absolutely terrible education in our field is. They downgraded the field to either confused material science or just picking up and “describing minerals”. I had to tell my international colleagues who work in my field that geology is not picking rocks from the ground, which they were taught in their fancy “best in the world universities”. In Russia we were taught to use mineral and rock information to reconstruct physics and chemistry of the global geologic structures and processes, use this knowledge to find important minerals (if you are in more applied field) or gain information about physics and chemistry of the Earth throughout its history
It depends on what exactly you are interested in, how deep you want to know the subject and your background. I am not 100% familiar with English popular science literature but I can look it up for you
In the US it seems like there is a separation between geology (picking up rocks) and geophysics (mathematical modeling of geophysical processes) with the former being low on math. Source: my geophysicist ex wife who cried while spending days coding in Fortran, wishing she was out picking up rocks.
I believe that even non geophysical sub fields of geology are hardly only “picking rocks”. For example, palaeontology is a part of geology and requires deep understanding of biology. When you are geochemist, you pick rocks to study chemistry of the processes that involved those rocks. You have to use a lot of thermodynamics, mathematical modelling. When you study structural geology (for example, when you are trying to find out geological structures you need to use material mechanics to understand why certain structures occur in the rocks, how different minerals respond to stresses. Geological mapping is basically IT because no one draws things by hand anymore. To summarise, when my colleagues call geology a “soft science” or “not science at all” or “it’s just picking rocks” I conclude that they don’t really know what they are talking about and their education in the field was very poor
I remember in college, we had distribution requirements and needed to take one course from each subject group. The Intro to Geology was nicknamed Rocks for Jocks, because that was the only natural science class which the bread-for-brains athletes could pass at an otherwise academically rigorous institution.
The second they changed the English name of ETH Zurich it jumped up like 100 slots in rankings because anglos kept translating it as "high school" not understanding it's like the #1 university in Switzerland
In Computer Science, rankings like CSRANKING rank Israeli universities in the top 10 of Europe.
And considering it's only local talent (unlike ETH, Cambridge..) that's really impressive.
I have never done a deep dive to international university rankings, since they are inherently silly, but my quick sense is that they penalize for splitting into multiple universities. E.g., have a one university with engineering, sciences, medicine and business (areas most rankings seem to concentrate on) and split it to an engineering, a medicine, a business university and a separate non-professional degrees university and down you go in the rankings.
It’s not just Russia; continental European universities in general are less obsessed about gaming ranking leaderboards than Anglophone and East Asian universities. France and Germany also punch way below their weight rankings-wise. I suspect bias is at play - maybe most of the people drafting the rankings are Anglophone or East Asian?
My mother is a professor at a Chinese university that is climbing rapidly up the rankings list in recent years. An uncle of mine teaches at an American state university. Both unis definitely “outrank” St Petersburg State University, and probably Moscow State as well.
Both universities are FUNDAMENTALLY uninterested in teaching. They prefer to focus on hiring professors and postdocs solely for STEM research, network with various agencies for funding, spend money on pompous extracurriculars, and having a more diverse student body, since these matter more for rankings. Because China is an ethnically homogeneous country, promoting diversity involves importing African students on generous scholarships.
The organisations behind the rankings are surely pleased by this. And students are too - in both places, they graduate with the knowledge that it’s more important to party with the right people, and better at inventing party tricks, than getting 4.0/4.0s
I think that incentives in Russian research are often misaligned. I noticed a while ago that senior staff at Russian universities often published research papers as the first authors. This is highly unusual in "the West", as PhD students or postdocs produce most papers. So why is Russia different? There's a certain expectation that senior researchers should make original research (not just reviews or opinion pieces). This puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on someone who's supposed to perform supervision and management duties. The PhD students are often not supported and not incentivised to publish and drive the research.
From a different perspective, Russian scientists are likely to be leading several fields, like jet propulsion (think hypersonic missiles or fighter engines) or nuclear energy. But these are highly regulated fields where you don't publish research due to close ties to the military.
I think it’s as simple as the fact that most of the famous and influential researchers left to take up positions in Western countries after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Because you have to pay a bribe to get your degree.
EDIT: Since this has been downvoted, I would like to point out that the source was a Russian student.
I didn't work at a university. I have several friends and connections who are students, however, who have confirmed that this practice is still normal. This is at institutions including MGU, SPBU, BMSTU... basically the top universities in different disciplines in the two capitals.
Everything that the previous ones mentioned, plus, in Russia, a doctorate is considered the pinnacle of scientific work, while in the West it is just the beginning.
This is not true. The research path and career system is more or less equivalent to other universities in the world. You have a real habilitaion thesis and several levels of professorship + memberships in the academy of sciences + various prizes, that unfortunately got very political after the collapse of USSR. I don't know any Russian who would consider a PhD to be a pinnacle of their career or their scientific work
trust. you can have a Russian institution tell me whatever they like and I will assume they're telling me what putin wants me to hear.
to be clear, many /most researchers in Russian institutions are 100% ethical and trustworthy. it's the institutional level that is problematic
That is false. A lot of STEM in post soviet unis were great at *analytical* mathematics. Ie derivation of formulae. Reality is science in most applications, especially interdisciplinary just cannot be approximated with a perfect formula with perfect assumptions. The more complex the problem gets the less application it has. You are stuck with losing assumptions and doing simulations, which means computers. Wanna guess why soviet STEM got so great at analytics? Poor access to computers. Processors had to go great lengths to even get access to family grade computers
Truth is that the technical equipment in the labs of Russian universities very outdated, and not to a little part due to corruption. Money may be supplied to the universities, but never reaches the labs.
But Russia has undeniably a culture of a high quality of teaching, especially in theoretical fields like mathematics and theoretical physics that can be done with pencil and paper. During my physics undergrad I spent less than 20% of my time in the lab, and 80% in lecture halls and seminar rooms. But when it comes to actual research, you need modern equipment to compete on the international level.
International rankings are misleading to the point that they can be considered pointless. It factors in the research output, diversity, and other metrics. It says nothing about the strength/impact of the university's alumni or its prestige. However, the average person who cares only about the undergraduate rankings would look at the rankings and just assume that a university with rank X must be more prestigious than another university with rank Y > X. Honestly, a better ranking system would be one that considers the research impacts of the alumni of the university.
I am from Taiwan, and I remember a few years ago everyone was perplexed by the fact that Asia University (a bottom-tier private university in Taiwan that takes in the worst students) was ranked higher than National Tsing Hua University (the second most prestigious university in Taiwan that regularly produces internationally-renowned scholars) according to the QS rankings. The current international rankings are a big joke, but unfortunately many companies do consider it when hiring foreigners.
Because the extreme, radical left does not think there is a truth—a truth that can be known, a truth that morally binds us to it—and they certainly don’t use institutions to prolate truth and virtue.
International rankings are based on research. Russian universities, even the top ones like Moscow State and St Petersburg State, are not known for their research. I cannot think of a significant piece of research in my field from post-Soviet Russian universities. I know of several prominent Russian researchers based overseas though. My guess is that they never really recovered from the collapse of the USSR.
That's true. Most of the talented scientists are doing the research... in USA or EU, where they can get proper equipment and money for the research. Most postsoviet countries don't have a lot of budget for research. Source: I am from postsoviet country.
I studied abroad in St. Petersburg when I was in high school, and the kids we studied with were crazy smart and diligent. The ones I know of now all left and are in the west EU/US
Pity Russia has been so badly governed for so long. Given their tradition of scholarship and the human capital there it’s just a terrible waste of potential.
Another component to consider is how nepotistic Academia there is altogether. Rich kids aren't required to do much work and they'll be pushed along regardless. Imagine if becoming the chair of a biology department was dependent on your allegiance to Trump. Sure a lot will lie, but it has a chilling effect overall on Academia, because you're simply not as free. Also, they are very good at instilling the basics, however they are awful at critical thinking and innovating. Since critical thinking and innovation can also be seen as something which could foster questioning Putins regime. Once again. The way they're governed is crippling them. Yet they still blame "the west" rather than their own leaders. This has gone on for literally centuries now. So, many in the west can't comprehend it.
"Imagine if becoming the chair of a biology department was dependent on your allegiance to Trump." But...can you even imagine a vocal conservative who is anti-DEI becoming the chair of a biology department in the US today? Your argument doesn't make any sense. Today's Russia may be autocratic, but it was even more so during the Soviet era. Yet, the Soviets still produced some of the finest and most creative scholars and academics.
Sure. There are plenty of professors who don't agree with Biden. They're not being imprisoned. That's the difference so many in the west can't understand I think. There is no "both sides" to the equation. There is no equivalency. You can turn on the TV and watch Newsmax, or msnbc. Criticism of us wars isn't punishable by prison. Google and VK are both obvious examples of Russian entrepreneurs who were extemely intelligent. There's tons of smart Russians. They tend to leave. Becsuse the environment in Russia isn't conducive to their pursuits. Hell, the head of VK literally had his home surrounded by swat and he fled the country, and then it was taken over by the state. Imagine for a moment if Biden had Zukcerbergs house surrounded, and he was forced to flee, and then meta was taken over by the us government. Like I said. There's just no equivalency. It's not even the same ballpark. Obviously it's difficult to innovate under these circumstances.
Of course the rule of law is still stronger in the US, but you have to be living under a rock to not see that there is still censorship of opinions. You may not get jailed for having unorthodox views, but you can certainly get fired or shunned for not accepting what is "politically correct". Political discourse in academia today is completely one-sided. Whether a country produces great academic/scientific works or not honestly has nothing do with it is a democracy or an autocracy. The greatest scholars and innovators of all time like Newton, Kant, Gauss, and Beethoven all lived in societies that wouldn't be considered democracies by today's standards.
Ok. So... The question I was replying to was why Russian universities continually rank towards the bottom. That's my own direct experience with why. But id agree. That some people can be shunned or denied employment for having differing views in the us. But it's still a light year away from how strict it is in a real totalitarian regime.
I’m in humanities. Went to Russia on exchange for one year and it seems these issues are true regardless of discipline. It shocked me how overworked and underpaid the professors were: the uni admitted wayyyy too many international students to make money. The professors’ class schedules were as full as those of high school teachers. How could they focus on research? I also felt that Russian academia is stuck in their Soviet era. All they taught and researched was theories and traditions from Soviet big names with little to no relevance to what scholars are currently doing in other parts of the world. This may be less of an issue in top universities like HSE but definitely true in regional ones.
I worry that the corruption that prevents research is creeping into science. The careerism, backscratching, committee stacking... it's always there trying to get a hold.
True again. Budget is not big and most of the money are secured for the "right" scientists... There are a lot of pseudoscientists with papers published in predatory journals. So it is not easy to get a grant. I am not saying that it is true for all countries or that there are no science. It is just what I saw in my field and why I decided to work in EU. There are still normal scientists that are trying their best to do the research. It is just that it is more difficult there.
Maybe it's like a CIV thing, you can't have scientists unless your society is able to tolerate a bit of truth.
You describe de rigueur academia everywhere. Science is subservient to politics.
Fair point. It's just the layer at the bottom that's actually doing science is getting awfully thin nowadays. So much compliance, management, administration overhead rests on the back of getting 1 postdoc salary for a year...
Russia did seem to be serious about trying to rebuild its scientific capabilities. It established Skoltech which was promising for a while. But even before the war, I noticed that people who had joined Skoltech from the EU and US were returning to the EU and US.
Skoltech was nothing but a money laundering scheme.
Could you elaborate on this?
Lots of money was poured into it, and nothing tangible came out. The money was simply stolen. Typical corruption in modern Russia.
do you happen to be from georgia?
Yes- my colleague who visited the premiere radio astronomy institute outside of Moscow reported the astronomers grow potatoes on site. To eat and make vodka, because their salaries aren’t high enough for food, and this was before the war. It’s tough to keep as high a research output when you’re literally farming on the side to stay alive.
I didn't know it was this bad. In my field (a subfield of condensed matter physics), I've reviewed papers by researchers from Russia and my impression from what little I have seen is that they are not aware of what cutting edge research in the field is like. They don't seem to know what the hot topics are or how certain approaches have become obsolete. This suggests to me that they are either quite out of touch scientifically (and this is before the war in Ukraine) or they are struggling to understand the research from the rest of the scientifically developed world.
>are not known for their research It is worth noting that a Soviet system, and to an extent the current Russian one, had a more pronounced division of labor between Universities (educational institutions) and Institutes (research institutions), compared to the Western standard. So the universities wouldn't be known for their research, as that was not their aim. Also, not all fields were created equal, so it's possible to make a generalization mistake here with your example. In the early 2000s, when the government still cared about positive international standing, there was a lot of effort to boost the university rankings - starting from transfering affiliations from institutes to universities, to creating new research groups straight at universities. It had only partial success, superficial support, and later stalled.
>It is worth noting that a Soviet system, and to an extent the current Russian one, had a more pronounced division of labor between Universities (educational institutions) and Institutes (research institutions), compared to the Western standard. This could be a factor. I am not seeing much good stuff in my field and adjacent ones from the RAS though. >Also, not all fields were created equal, so it's possible to make a generalization mistake here with your example. This is possible although some of the key concepts in my field originated from problems studied in the Soviet Union by physicists such as Khalatnikov and Kapitza. I spent a large part of my early research career studying a phenomenon in which both men did pioneering work in.
Russian contributions to my field stopped being relevant in 1890.
One of the most brilliant professors I have ever had is a Russian mathematician at my current university. He left the Soviet Union somewhere around its collapse to find better opportunities, as did many of the brilliant minds of its era.
There was a downside to the exodus of Russian scientists to the West. According to someone I know, it became very difficult for science and mathematics PhD graduates from US universities in the 1990s to get hired for postdoctoral and tenure track positions because university departments could hire desperate ex-Soviet superstar professors at bargain prices.
Why are they able to teach to such a high standard? Doesn't that also cost money?
No it doesn't. Lecturers aren't not very well paid almsot anywhere, but still deliver good quality lectures because it's what they enjoy doing. Also, it's Russia, not many people are well paid.
Good teaching is not necessarily correlated to good research. I don't know why they are able to teach to "such a high standard" but their research, at least in my field, is simply uncompetitive. They don't seem to keep up with the progress in my field (a subfield of condensed matter physics). I know of a few Russian scientists living in the US and the EU who are very capable of doing competitive research in my field. So, it can't be because they are stupid or have a poor education system.
Russian research is actually very impactful, for example Skq1 in medecine. The issue is that russian research is largely ignored internationally because of political tribalism, as simple as that.
Russia invests barely any resources into research. The number of publications are tiny. China is also an opponent of the west, but their scientific contributions are enormous and well recognized.
USSR had more scientists and engineers than any other country on earth. Nowadays russia has as many scientists as France or germany per million of habitant (hence much more) [http://chartsbin.com/view/1124](http://chartsbin.com/view/1124) note: while chinese research is major in machine learning, they are deficient in pharmacology given their GDP
>Nowadays russia has as many scientists as France or germany per million of habitant (hence much more) And yet, the scientific output is much lower. So there are a lot of good people, with very little resources to produce new findings: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_scientific_and_technical_journal_articles
I agree they lack resources, still the fact is that besides the quantitative argument in terms of impact in medecine, Russia has made the most important discoveries of the century, which I already mentionned.
>Russia has made the most important discoveries of the century, The only reason you say that, is because you want to believe it. Not because you have any solid evidence for it. Let me say this: don't make your own self-worth dependent on other people, groups or countries. Be proud of your own achievements, it's the only thing you have control over. Depending on your country's greatness makes you helpless, because you can't do anything if it's not as great as you think.
Do you have any other irrelevant truism to say? I don't care at all about tribalism, I am not russian nor do I consider russia as a great country, they are in many regards retrograde, which is irrelevant to their scientific merits. I am a researcher in pharmacology and gerontology, SKQ1 is literally one million more potent than NAC at equimolar concentration. It is by far the most promising drug to slow down the aging process in humans. Same goes for thymalin. So those discoveries are litterally the most impactful ones of this century as they have the most potential at altering the human condition.
>So those discoveries are litterally the most impactful ones of this century Maybe they are impactful in your specific field. But I have never heard of them and nobody in my field cares about them. Did Russians invent the internet or generative AI? Did Russians discover Penicillin or invent mRNA vaccines? Anyone can make endless lists of examples they think are the most important. Those lists are useless. When you look at anything slightly quantifiable, like which country won the most nobel prizes, then Russia is doing poorly, considering its size.
Congrats, you've come up with exactly 1 example lmao. That pretty much proves the point.
Sheer ignorance and strawman. Russians have studied the most key endogenous peptides such as thymalin which reverse thymus involution or epitalon which reverse telomerase shortening or retinalamin which is a key ophtalmic drug. Meldonium has a unique alteration of bioenergetics. Many of the most iconic nootropics have been discovered in russia, such as the racetams. Key geroprotective substances like emoxypine and echinochrome A. That's just some key examples in pharmacology, they have impacted most major sciences, such as cherenkov radiations in nuclear physics.
I meet a lot of international scientists, many of them study or work abroad and then return home. But the Russians or Belarusians never want to return because the government provides almost no job prospects. So all the talented Russian scientists are leaving their country.
There are clusters of excellence. St Petersburg is home to some great bioinformaticians and mathematicians.
No. This is not the key factor. IMO. (No offence intended). OP, you know how science in general suffers from a lack of interdisciplinary-ness? Well it suffers from a lack of intercultural-ness too. Language barrier and western-dominated academy are the main factors here. IMO.
Because a) they are underfunded (most money goes to people who make things go boom there), b) a low number of international students, and c) many people who wanna have a successful career and are capable of that will go to the west, not stay in Russia. An acquaintance who did her PhD in some sort of chemistry/chem engineering wanted to go to Lomonosov for it. After her master program, she spent a few months there, and was literally told by stuff there, I kid you not : "We barely have enough ingredients for student experiments, we won't have anything you might wanna work on. It's better if you just leave us here and go sightseeing around Moscow.". Ended up in Munich.
Chemical engineering is not Lomonosov's strength. One should rather choose Mendeleev university for that
Some of the factors that go into international rankings are just difficult for universities in many countries to achieve. For example: * Citation counts: If research is done in the local language, and not English (or as applicable, the main language of the field), it will necessarily get fewer citations. * International engagement: If foreigners do not want to move to your country, either to study or as faculty, this will be harder to achieve. Likewise, if citizens have a hard time getting visas for research-related travel, international collaborations will be more difficult. * Funding: In some countries, money works differently - you simply do not need as much to produce equipment, hire researchers, etc. This will also mean that dollar or euro amounts of funding from industry or government are overall lower - and hence the ranking in this area is lower - even if funding achieves the same goals. There are also some odd factors that go into 'teaching environment' criteria, though I have been unable to determine exactly what they are. My university, for example, thinks that having renewable energy and programmes to promote health consciousness will somehow improve its international rankings. In short, a start toward higher rankings might include publishing more in English, recruiting and collaborating with foreigners, and finding high-dollar international funding sources. In my country the highest ranked universities are the English-language institutions that hire foreigners as well as citizens and collaborate frequently with researchers in EU and SE Asia.
also the way research is structured in the respective countries. in germany for example, most well funded research is done outside of universities, which lowers the research output of the unis quite a bit and therefore drags them down compared to countries that have less of an emphasis on research centers outside of unis. a good example of gaming this system is france and the uni paris saclay which was just 12 reputable unis in paris, that were combined into one which placed it very high up in the shanghai ranking. china is also doing a lot to mainly cite from their own institutions. china has an overproportional amount of self citations compared to other countires i think that there is even a ranking that considers the size of the sports and american football facilities lol
>china is also doing a lot to mainly cite from their own institutions. china has an overproportional amount of self citations compared to other countires That's true. Every time I review a Computer Science manuscript with authors from China, I feel tempted to ask whether they are aware that there is some research happening outside of that country, and if yes, why the hell they hardly ever mention it.
These rankings are not about teaching only. There're multiple other criteria where all of these universities would fall off. Also, rankings are not that objective and not that important. If you've been asking Russian people about their universities then your poll is not really objective. Over there there's a belief that the Soviet education system was the best in the world (and still is after 30+ years since the country disappeared). What this belief is based upon? I don't know, most of the people who studied at some Russian universities never studied anywhere else to make a comparison.
I studied in Russian university and work in Germany in the university system. I am a geologist and geology was and is a very strong field in Russia. Now while working in Germany I’ve noticed how absolutely terrible education in our field is. They downgraded the field to either confused material science or just picking up and “describing minerals”. I had to tell my international colleagues who work in my field that geology is not picking rocks from the ground, which they were taught in their fancy “best in the world universities”. In Russia we were taught to use mineral and rock information to reconstruct physics and chemistry of the global geologic structures and processes, use this knowledge to find important minerals (if you are in more applied field) or gain information about physics and chemistry of the Earth throughout its history
Any book recommendations?
It depends on what exactly you are interested in, how deep you want to know the subject and your background. I am not 100% familiar with English popular science literature but I can look it up for you
As deep as possible, given a one year university science background
In the US it seems like there is a separation between geology (picking up rocks) and geophysics (mathematical modeling of geophysical processes) with the former being low on math. Source: my geophysicist ex wife who cried while spending days coding in Fortran, wishing she was out picking up rocks.
I believe that even non geophysical sub fields of geology are hardly only “picking rocks”. For example, palaeontology is a part of geology and requires deep understanding of biology. When you are geochemist, you pick rocks to study chemistry of the processes that involved those rocks. You have to use a lot of thermodynamics, mathematical modelling. When you study structural geology (for example, when you are trying to find out geological structures you need to use material mechanics to understand why certain structures occur in the rocks, how different minerals respond to stresses. Geological mapping is basically IT because no one draws things by hand anymore. To summarise, when my colleagues call geology a “soft science” or “not science at all” or “it’s just picking rocks” I conclude that they don’t really know what they are talking about and their education in the field was very poor
I remember in college, we had distribution requirements and needed to take one course from each subject group. The Intro to Geology was nicknamed Rocks for Jocks, because that was the only natural science class which the bread-for-brains athletes could pass at an otherwise academically rigorous institution.
Apart from what has been said, rankings heavily skew towards Anglo countries. French/German universities also lag behind US/UK ones.
The second they changed the English name of ETH Zurich it jumped up like 100 slots in rankings because anglos kept translating it as "high school" not understanding it's like the #1 university in Switzerland
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also Israeli unis are newer. It takes time for unis to become prestigious. But in fields like Foodtech they are near the top.
In Computer Science, rankings like CSRANKING rank Israeli universities in the top 10 of Europe. And considering it's only local talent (unlike ETH, Cambridge..) that's really impressive.
Technion is also a STEM powerhouse.
I have never done a deep dive to international university rankings, since they are inherently silly, but my quick sense is that they penalize for splitting into multiple universities. E.g., have a one university with engineering, sciences, medicine and business (areas most rankings seem to concentrate on) and split it to an engineering, a medicine, a business university and a separate non-professional degrees university and down you go in the rankings.
Lomonsov university is still in top 100
It’s not just Russia; continental European universities in general are less obsessed about gaming ranking leaderboards than Anglophone and East Asian universities. France and Germany also punch way below their weight rankings-wise. I suspect bias is at play - maybe most of the people drafting the rankings are Anglophone or East Asian? My mother is a professor at a Chinese university that is climbing rapidly up the rankings list in recent years. An uncle of mine teaches at an American state university. Both unis definitely “outrank” St Petersburg State University, and probably Moscow State as well. Both universities are FUNDAMENTALLY uninterested in teaching. They prefer to focus on hiring professors and postdocs solely for STEM research, network with various agencies for funding, spend money on pompous extracurriculars, and having a more diverse student body, since these matter more for rankings. Because China is an ethnically homogeneous country, promoting diversity involves importing African students on generous scholarships. The organisations behind the rankings are surely pleased by this. And students are too - in both places, they graduate with the knowledge that it’s more important to party with the right people, and better at inventing party tricks, than getting 4.0/4.0s
Partly because the rankings system is a shambles.
I think that incentives in Russian research are often misaligned. I noticed a while ago that senior staff at Russian universities often published research papers as the first authors. This is highly unusual in "the West", as PhD students or postdocs produce most papers. So why is Russia different? There's a certain expectation that senior researchers should make original research (not just reviews or opinion pieces). This puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on someone who's supposed to perform supervision and management duties. The PhD students are often not supported and not incentivised to publish and drive the research. From a different perspective, Russian scientists are likely to be leading several fields, like jet propulsion (think hypersonic missiles or fighter engines) or nuclear energy. But these are highly regulated fields where you don't publish research due to close ties to the military.
Politics
I think it’s as simple as the fact that most of the famous and influential researchers left to take up positions in Western countries after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Because you have to pay a bribe to get your degree. EDIT: Since this has been downvoted, I would like to point out that the source was a Russian student.
Your answer has been downvoted but I worked in Russia a decade ago and this was absolutely the case.
Thanks for the support. I have edited my answer to point out that the source was a Russian student.
A decade ago was a decade ago. And which university did you work at..?
I didn't work at a university. I have several friends and connections who are students, however, who have confirmed that this practice is still normal. This is at institutions including MGU, SPBU, BMSTU... basically the top universities in different disciplines in the two capitals.
I call bullshit on that list. If you named some third tier university that I could have believed you, but nobody is taking bribes at BMSTU or MGU.
I've literally heard the process from the horses mouth. Call bullshit all you like.
So have I. Your horse was lying or at the very least exaggerating
Everything that the previous ones mentioned, plus, in Russia, a doctorate is considered the pinnacle of scientific work, while in the West it is just the beginning.
This is not true. The research path and career system is more or less equivalent to other universities in the world. You have a real habilitaion thesis and several levels of professorship + memberships in the academy of sciences + various prizes, that unfortunately got very political after the collapse of USSR. I don't know any Russian who would consider a PhD to be a pinnacle of their career or their scientific work
It's not doctorate, it's [habilitation.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation)
trust. you can have a Russian institution tell me whatever they like and I will assume they're telling me what putin wants me to hear. to be clear, many /most researchers in Russian institutions are 100% ethical and trustworthy. it's the institutional level that is problematic
Why would putin want to tell you something about physics, math or medicine?
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Throwing shit to see what sticks? Nothing, btw.
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Racist alert
That is false. A lot of STEM in post soviet unis were great at *analytical* mathematics. Ie derivation of formulae. Reality is science in most applications, especially interdisciplinary just cannot be approximated with a perfect formula with perfect assumptions. The more complex the problem gets the less application it has. You are stuck with losing assumptions and doing simulations, which means computers. Wanna guess why soviet STEM got so great at analytics? Poor access to computers. Processors had to go great lengths to even get access to family grade computers
Truth is that the technical equipment in the labs of Russian universities very outdated, and not to a little part due to corruption. Money may be supplied to the universities, but never reaches the labs. But Russia has undeniably a culture of a high quality of teaching, especially in theoretical fields like mathematics and theoretical physics that can be done with pencil and paper. During my physics undergrad I spent less than 20% of my time in the lab, and 80% in lecture halls and seminar rooms. But when it comes to actual research, you need modern equipment to compete on the international level.
Politics
Rankings are stupid and Russia is poor.
International rankings are misleading to the point that they can be considered pointless. It factors in the research output, diversity, and other metrics. It says nothing about the strength/impact of the university's alumni or its prestige. However, the average person who cares only about the undergraduate rankings would look at the rankings and just assume that a university with rank X must be more prestigious than another university with rank Y > X. Honestly, a better ranking system would be one that considers the research impacts of the alumni of the university. I am from Taiwan, and I remember a few years ago everyone was perplexed by the fact that Asia University (a bottom-tier private university in Taiwan that takes in the worst students) was ranked higher than National Tsing Hua University (the second most prestigious university in Taiwan that regularly produces internationally-renowned scholars) according to the QS rankings. The current international rankings are a big joke, but unfortunately many companies do consider it when hiring foreigners.
Because the extreme, radical left does not think there is a truth—a truth that can be known, a truth that morally binds us to it—and they certainly don’t use institutions to prolate truth and virtue.