Yuri Rubin: “Synergy’s dual qualification program will allow us to prepare entrepreneurs of the digital future”

– What, in your opinion, explains the university’s high place in the ranking?

– Entrepreneurship is a popular direction in Russian higher education. Our difference is that graduates can be confidently called professional entrepreneurs with relevant professional competencies.

Studying at the university is based on a combination of fundamental knowledge and practical orientation of the programs. 70% of disciplines are focused on professional implementation.

The training is structured so that students learn to solve the tasks and problems that every business faces. They must be able to create their own business, run it, managing production, commercial and management processes on a daily basis, develop it, successfully compete with others, and, if necessary, stop entrepreneurial activity by closing the business.

For example, students master generating business ideas and launching their own business projects over three semesters. They prepare a roadmap for creating their own business and go all the way, focusing on the created business model. There is a separate course on competition. Our efforts to develop teaching approaches have been recognized. In 2008, the university became a laureate of the Russian Government award for a series of textbooks on competition and ensuring the competitiveness of the Russian economy.

All teachers of entrepreneurial disciplines are practitioners, having experience in entrepreneurship or work in related fields – business consulting, tax or financial authorities. Along with traditional theoretical courses, we actively practice such types of practical classes as trainings, hackathons, situational workshops, workshops on solving entrepreneurial problems, case championships, and investment sessions. The educational program serves the main goal – to ensure high professionalism of graduates in the areas of creating, running and developing their own business. And this should happen during the period of their studies and culminate in their graduation work, the basis of which is the start-up of their own business project.

During their studies, students learn to be skilled and competitive owners of their own business. When the term “startup” was not yet used in Russian, university students opened their own companies and used the acquired knowledge and skills to write their thesis. Therefore, when in 2017, the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation instructed the Ministry of Education to develop the “Startup as a Diploma” program to involve talented students in real entrepreneurship, it turned out that we, in fact, foresaw the emerging trend in advance.

– It is known that the “Synergy” program is one of the effective cases of implementing the “Startup as a Diploma” program. Please tell us in more detail how students are prepared to create their own business.

– Undergraduate students already in their second year learn to form a business idea. It must be relevant, competitive and implementable by its author. Because already in the next semester, students, with rare exceptions, turn this idea into a real business. Children are trained not only to create new companies from scratch, but also to pay taxes correctly, keep records, conduct a comprehensive analysis of their work, compete successfully, engage in marketing and brand promotion. We are also working on developing trajectories for graduates to manage their entrepreneurial resources, which are based on professionally significant personal qualities and abilities.

A significant role in the curriculum is given to educational, technological and industrial entrepreneurial practices of students. While many universities do not know how to use practice for good, we treat it as perhaps the most important element of learning. Students practice in jobs that they themselves create as startup entrepreneurs. This process at Synergy is coordinated by the Entrepreneurship Studio. At the end of the semester, students write a course paper about how the internship went and what they understood during the internship. In the 4th semester, the practice is linked to the content of the “Startup Tracking” course, and in the 6th semester – with the course on business development in the post-startup period. This approach allows the university to annually graduate from 60 to 100 startups per year.

– It’s a lot?

– Quite a lot. Last year we produced 69 viable startups that are still active today.

– What is the viability of a startup?

– It would be more correct to say its competitive stability. A startup is a business project that is being implemented for the first time. A product or service is being created that needs to be brought to the client and “hook” him. This product must have competitive advantages. A startup is stable in a competitive environment if it has a relatively stable clientele that allows it to reproduce normally. Starting your own business is a difficult task, so we do not punish students for unsuccessful startups if they honestly analyze what went wrong in their thesis. In this case, we see that the person is professionally competent and ready to work in the market, and next time he will succeed.

– A year ago, the Ministry of Education and Science introduced a new model of educational programs that allows students to receive diplomas with two qualifications. Is this model being implemented at the Synergy Faculty of Business?

“It was a really wise decision.” It allows universities to prepare students with a wide range of competencies to make it easier for them to find good jobs. This academic year, we are launching the first program in the country focused on obtaining two professional qualifications: in the areas of “Applied Informatics” and “Management” (profile “Entrepreneurship”)” for students of the Faculty of Business. The program allows you to diversify your educational outcome. And information technology is the most popular branch of the industry, and the state is waiting for serious breakthroughs here.

Graduates of the dual qualification program will be able to become competent professional entrepreneurs and at the same time developers of information systems for automating business processes, as well as business analysts. This will allow us to prepare entrepreneurs of the digital future who will feel confident in any field of activity in the modern digital environment.

– At the end of 2020, the Ministry of Education and Science awarded Synergy University the status of a “federal innovation platform” for the development and implementation of promising approaches in the field of entrepreneurship education. What work does your university do within the framework of the FIP?

– We are the base university for developing a model of continuous entrepreneurial education. Our site resident partners are Tomsk Polytechnic University, North-Eastern Federal University, Moscow State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk University of Economics and Management and Tyumen State University. Together we create new innovative educational programs on entrepreneurship, prepare scientific papers, and test new technologies in teaching.

– What did you manage to accomplish over the past academic year?

– For the first time, a competency-based model of entrepreneurship education in undergraduate and graduate programs has been developed. A program for professional retraining of teachers who will teach entrepreneurship has been created. A program of inter-university interaction has been drawn up to train students in a single educational circuit. Textbooks on basic entrepreneurial disciplines have been updated.

– How do you see a Russian entrepreneur in the near future?

– The prospects are not bad. There is a trend towards increasing the professionalism of entrepreneurs and the level of their professional competence. Russian entrepreneurs must be competitive by world standards. There are no alternatives to this path. The country needs efficient and professional entrepreneurs. This is the only way to cope with the large-scale challenges that the country faces in the coming decades.

photo: Press service of Synergy University