Find opportunities that are right for you to continue your education outside your home country.
© 2024 Freedom Degree
Freedom Degree, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. © 2024 | Powered by Strapi
Find opportunities that are right for you to continue your education outside your home country.
© 2024 Freedom Degree
Freedom Degree, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. © 2024 | Powered by Strapi
Aug 24, 2024
More than 20 full-length courses – "Smolny" with the support of Bard College has a new enrollment. These are free online courses with experienced academics, many of whom work and teach at EU and US universities. The courses are taught in English and Russian. The most important feature of the courses is that you can get credits from Bard College and put them on the transcript of the university where you are studying.
You can find course descriptions for art, history, philosophy, and other disciplines at the link. The Smolny Without Borders initiative targets a wide range of participants, regardless of age or education, making the courses accessible to almost anyone who wants to participate.
The application deadline is September 2, 2024
The European Humanities University will host a conference “Quo vadis European Humanities University?” on the history and mission of universities in exile.
"Some universities are forced to become universities in exile. What are their conditions and difficulties? What is their mission, meaning and potential? How does the university show its belonging to the whole of humanity in the context of asylum?"
The participants of the conference will be the founders of EHU, researchers from different countries, public figures. They will talk about both the prospects of EHU and the role of higher education in today's unstable world.
Quotas will be set for applicants without tests - they should be no more than 70% of the total number of budget places. Officials want to exclude situations when Olympiad students occupy almost all state-funded places.
This year, such students accounted for only 2% of the total number of students enrolled in Russia, according to Rosobrnadzor. Nevertheless, in some particularly competitive specialties, there is a situation when the number of applicants with the right to enter the university without entrance tests is higher than the number of budget places.
Experts at the Ministry of Education and Science have developed a unified standard of a history textbook for all students of non-related specialties (i.e., for all non-historians).
The authors of the project emphasize the importance of patriotism and “protection of national interests”. The textbook pays special attention to the history of the Great Patriotic War and also reflects recent events related to Russia's war against Ukraine. Sergei Naryshkin, head of the Russian Historical Society and director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, suggested cutting the sections of the textbook related to World History. The creators of the handbook have approved his edits.
The textbook should become mandatory for Russian higher education starting from September 1 this year.
The Labour Party in the UK has proposed a "right to switch off" policy aimed at improving work-life balance, including in academia. This policy would give employees the legal right to disconnect from work-related communications, such as emails and messages, outside of their contracted working hours. In academia, where workloads and expectations often extend beyond typical working hours, this policy seeks to protect staff from burnout.
If implemented, this policy would offer legal protections to employees who choose not to respond to work-related communications during their off hours, preventing any negative repercussions for doing so. The initiative is part of a broader push to change the workplace culture in the UK, where being always "on" has become increasingly normalized, especially with the rise of remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The proposal aligns with similar "right to disconnect" laws that have been introduced in other countries, such as France and Ireland, reflecting a growing recognition of the importance of protecting employees' personal time.
Under the Sunak’s Conservative government, The UK has implemented more stringent immigration policies in recent years, particularly in work and student visa categories. Higher requirements for sponsorship, financial thresholds, and English language proficiency have made it more difficult for some applicants to meet the criteria, potentially leading to fewer applications.
Political discourse around immigration in the UK, including debates about controlling borders and reducing immigration numbers, may also have influenced potential applicants' decisions.
A decline in applications could have a variety of consequences, including potential problems for industries that depend on an international workforce, such as health care.