MIPT students won the “anti-Chinese riot”: the leadership went forward

The language is finished by those who have already started

The rebellion of MIPT students against the forced teaching of the Chinese language and the narrowing of the university program to two languages ​​has borne fruit. The administration went forward and returned the old foreign language format to the guys. Despite the fact that before that I convinced how important it is for future engineers and physicists in our century to rely on Chinese. Students celebrate the victory: “We are proud of Phystech, which takes into account our opinion!”.

Recall that on March 29, Student Council activists began collecting signatures for their petition “against compulsory Chinese and for high-quality foreign language.” The fact is that two years ago, university students studied five languages ​​to choose from: English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese. But the new leadership of the Department of Foreign Languages ​​considered German and French superfluous. And since this academic year, since September 2022, the administration of the Physicotechnical Institute has taken a course towards Chinese, explaining this as follows: “Our goal is to train in-demand and professional students, and the role of China in the high-tech market is growing.” After the semester, the department announced that now students first study English up to B2 level, and from the third year they are automatically sent to Chinese. But this alignment of future engineers did not suit. The student community demanded to “provide greater opportunities for students” in terms of language learning.

When “MK” turned to the leadership of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology for comments, they promised a “constructive dialogue.” And they kept their word. After negotiations with the activists, the administration of the university made concessions to the students.

“Phystech will return to the classical program of teaching foreign languages,” confirmed “MK” today in the press service of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. – The decision to introduce Chinese as a second foreign language at MIPT was due to objective factors, and we still consider it timely and promising.

But, despite this, as the university administration puts it, “in order not to get bogged down in discussions, and most importantly, not to delay the transition period and give students the opportunity to study foreign languages ​​at the traditionally high level for Phystech, we decided to return to the classic MIPT teaching program foreign languages, which was implemented at the Institute until September 1, 2021.

This means that the children will be given back all the variety of languages: they will have English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese.

“On Friday, a meeting was held with the participation of the rector, vice-rector for academic affairs, head of the department and the student council,” Ilya Zakharov, chairman of the MIPT student council, told MK. – The rector expressed an unequivocal position: it is necessary to return the formats of teaching foreign languages, as it was before the start of reforms. I am proud of Fiztekh, which once again confirmed its status as a university that really takes into account the needs of the student community! Now we are focused on clarifying the details of the “new-old” model of teaching foreign languages, and we are interacting with the administration about this.

“It’s great, I’m glad that the students’ opinion means something at Phystech!” some students say. Those who study Chinese are unhappy: “Is there a chance now to compete for students who have already been sent to Chinese against their will? These students seem to have suffered the most from this reform!”

Well, for some reason, the guys don’t want to learn Chinese, and that’s it.

However, “students who are currently studying Chinese will complete their studies under this program,” the MIPT press service commented to us. “Someone wants to finish learning Chinese, someone doesn’t want to,” Ilya Zakharov explained to MK. – There are not very many students who have already been sent to Chinese; I think that the issue with them will be resolved on an individual basis.”