“When hiring, they almost don’t look at education”

Sergei Gabestro, CEO of Electronic Trading Systems JSC:

– I have an Orthodox education, which is very important for me, but my alma mater is, of course, MGIMO, the Faculty of International Law. It was a powerful social lift. Arriving from Simferopol, I studied with talented people, with many of whom I subsequently created a business. And the impetus in entrepreneurship also came from there: after graduating from the institute, my colleague and I created my first enterprise – a law firm.

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Valdis Pelsh, director, TV presenter:

– The fact that my work, a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University, has taken a different path, does not matter. Upon graduation, we were offered four main areas of employment: the party line, science, the KGB or something else. I became a showman.

I graduated not just from the best university in the country, I had one of the best basic education. And it must be recalled that the Faculty of Philosophy was one of the three when it was founded, along with the faculties of medicine and law. And this education, including in the work of the presenter, has helped me more than once both in terms of general erudition, and in terms of a philosophical attitude to life, assessing a specific situation on the air.

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Andrey Bilzho, artist, restaurateur

— I am very satisfied with my education. The Second Moscow State Medical Institute and 15 years of work as a psychiatrist taught me, as professor-physiologist Grigory Ivanovich Kositsky said, “to think in a medical way.” It was not clear to me then, but now I understand it well. Everything that I then did and do is the branches of one tree – medical education.

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Alexander Gamayunov, founder of the network of vegetarian cafes “Ukrop”, blogger:

– My education was not useful to me from the word “absolutely”. I graduated from the Institute of Trade and Economics, and when I created the Dill project, it was not education as such that helped me, but the skills acquired at the university, when I had to pass exams perfectly, work in parallel and be in time everywhere.

Good communication skills as well. The Ukrop brand was born because this topic was very poorly developed in St. Petersburg, establishments of this kind could be found either with a strongly religious orientation or strongly Indian. And we wanted to do something understandable and secular. The idea is simple – and without meat you can eat deliciously.

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Vitaly Egorov, popularizer of astronautics, author of the Green Cat blog:

– I do not regret the time spent at the Tula State Pedagogical University. L. N. Tolstoy time. He worked as a history teacher for only a year, and then he went into the popularization of astronautics and applied the skills and knowledge gained during his studies in each type of activity. Working with sources, analyzing scientific publications, preparing texts, speaking to a wide audience – this was taught by the university.

A diploma is just a piece of paper, what is more important is what you have learned and how you will apply it in the future. Often the lack of education in those areas of science that was not taught in my course, such as physics or geology, often interferes. Then I begin to engage in self-education, read books and scientific articles, consult with specialists.

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Yuri Virovets, co-founder of HeadHunter, entrepreneur:

– I am satisfied, and two faculties of Moscow State University – chemical and psychological – are enough for me. When I started to study, there was no option to go to study abroad, and when I graduated, I had to work.

Our level of education is falling, so now the difference between education in Russia and abroad is huge. But the organization of education is also important, for example, the issue of attitudes towards cheating or the absence of tests and exams for bribes. When hiring, they almost do not look at education, the main thing is experience and skills. But in general it is needed, and it is very important where it is received.

The university brand is important. Phystech is always better than Oklahoma State University, but Harvard is better than Phystech. Education is a kind of quality mark, and if you A – managed to enter and B – graduated from a good university, then you have a good intellect, ability to work, perseverance. It is impossible to graduate from Fiztekh and be a fool, but at a no name university it is possible. In Soviet times, Moscow State University had a lot of weight, it was a top university, but today a lot has changed, and HSE, Phystech are much higher.

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Svetlana Bessarab, State Duma deputy:

“Education has always helped me in drafting bills. I graduated from the Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics, then the Krasnodar Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, then the Academy of Labor and Social Relations. I was lucky, I found teachers with a very good school of education received in the USSR.

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Natalya Zubareva, founder and head of the Preventive Medicine Clinic:

– Kuban State Medical University and subsequent educational programs in Russia, the USA, Monaco in the field of dietetics, sports nutrition and related fields gave me the basis for personal and professional growth. Most importantly, I met wonderful mentors who supported the love and interest instilled by my father in medicine, including alternative medicine. Even those senior colleagues who did not welcome my innovation when I first started as a cardiologist taught me to take full responsibility, to argue the correctness of my decisions, to achieve results.

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Andrey Tretyakov, restaurateur, partner of the Stereopeople Group restaurant chain:

– Having entered the university after school, I simultaneously started working in a bar on the night shift. But it was almost impossible to combine study with such a schedule. As a result, he dropped out of the second course.

University penates were replaced by many hours of work in a bar. I took on any job and studied in this way, comprehending the features of the industry: I was on face control, I was a bartender, a hookah man, etc. And now I am constantly learning and “passing exams”.

The pandemic and 2022, for example, “helped” become flexible, quickly respond to changes, and taught us how to quickly make important decisions. Opening the first bar, followed by two more establishments, was helped not by theory, but by daily involvement in all processes, a well-coordinated team and many years of experience.

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Konstantin Babkin, President of the Industrial Union “New Commonwealth” and the Russian Association of Manufacturers of Specialized Machinery and Equipment “Rosspetsmash”:

— I am impressed with the knowledge that I received at MIPT, and I am very grateful to the teachers who gave me a systematic approach to learning. With great warmth I remember these six unforgettable years, which united happy students and the most serious plowing, without which it is impossible to comprehend the world and the ability to cut through the jungle. Thanks to this, I successfully solve almost all issues to this day, whether it is a systematic entry into a new industry, as was the case with agricultural engineering more than 25 years ago, or the need, like “on the night before the exam”, to learn the minimum language for a business trip.

Probably, I lacked the humanitarian aspect, the systematic approach to “lyricism” at the Phystech. At that time, MIPT liked to quote Ernest Rutherford that “all sciences are divided into physics and stamp collecting.” That is, the experimental-theoretical field had an indisputable priority over history, philosophy, literature and other classification sciences. Today we see that this is not so: in the modern world, the ability to arrange an orange revolution can be more terrible than the atomic bomb itself.

Group “Direct speech”