Getting a faculty job with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology is simple, provost Raj Rajagopalan, tells sk.ru in an interview. Prove you have the innovative qualities required by leaving your comfort zone and moving to Russia to be part of something great, like he did.
An artist's impression of how Skoltech is expected to look by 2020
“I thought Skoltech was a very interesting challenge, but if my home is somewhere other than Russia, then I’m not taking the same risk I’m asking other people to take,” Rajagopalan acknowledges.“It’s got to be 100 percent or zero percent.”
Skoltech, a university that opened in 2012 in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, is the educational arm of the Skolkovo project – a drive by the Russian government to wean the economy off oil and gas and create more startup businesses.
The job of provost “just fell into my lap” in March 2014, says Rajagopalan, who until recently directed Middle East collaborations for the National University of Singapore.
Since then, he’s had the task – exciting as it is daunting – of building an institute for which there are no forerunners, no models, no blueprints. One for which innovation isn’t a mere afterthought, but part of its DNA.
Here Rajagopalan shares his thoughts on why this approach could shake up education systems and prompt a rethink in how university ratings lists (mere “popularity contests”) of the future should be assembled.
Prof. Raj Rajagopalan
This is a remarkable challenge you’re taking on.
“It’s a challenge, and in any new startup there are lots of issues. This is a new type of university, and when you have something else, even psychologically, you think of the other place as your home. I was in Singapore for nine years. So I didn’t think that was a model that one should use.”
The entire weight of responsibility for the success of the Skoltech project rests on your shoulders?
“Yes, yes. And the entire blame! If I do well, the president gets the credit. If I don’t do well, I get the blame!”
What are you trying to create with Skoltech?
“Our goal is to create a new kind of institution that combines research, education and innovation. One of the principle value propositions of Skoltech is that the students and the faculty have innovation at the core. In our master’s program, for example, innovation is the backbone.”
“We are trying to create a new mindset in our students. Traditionally our universities used to teach what I would call received wisdom. You simply impart what is in the books. Then came research institutions, so you not only learn knowledge created by others, you create your own knowledge. The modern universities are the ones that go one step further: How do you actually use that knowledge for the common wellbeing of the citizen. To me, that is innovation. Innovation is central to that. There are very few universities of this type. This is one university that is being built from scratch with innovation as the backbone. But many traditional universities now try to emphasize innovation. This is appropriate for the whole Skolkovo project.”
That’s the ideal. That’s what we’re aiming for. But look where we are now. How do we get from A to B?
“We are creating the educational programs, we are hiring the best faculty members in the right areas. Areas that are relevant and feasible in Russia. We are building the buildings. But the implementation is in creating the mindset in education. The mindset for research that doesn’t necessarily have to wait for the buildings. We do need the buildings. We have experimental work that you have to do in your own facilities. So to me the concept stage is clear. The implementation depends on the people you bring in, and what they do, and the encouragement you give, the mentorship that you provide, and that’s where the success lies.”
What are the biggest obstacles in your path?
“There are a number of challenges. Let me give you some at random. People appreciate this concept. But getting people [professors, teachers, administrators] to come and do it [work at Skoltech] is a challenge. Most people, like myself, take the safe route. When you recruit faculty, you want faculty members who are not only excellent in what they do, but they have that pioneering mindset. Willing to take a risk. That is a very, very small subset of the people who are out there. Another challenge – when you want to get people who are from the Russian diaspora, or non-Russians: When you try to get people from other places, where they are quite safe and comfortable, it takes a special person to say ‘I am going to move from what is good to achieve something great.’ That’s a challenge. A third is this. You may have all the ingredients. You may know what the ingredients are that you need to make something, but putting them in the right order, in the right context, that’s a challenge. It’s almost like cooking. You may know what the ingredients are – how much of this, and how much of that. You know what policies and procedures you need to put in place, but what goes first? In what proportions? That’s a challenge. There’s no blueprint. I was telling someone that just because you have been a child, it doesn’t mean that you know how to raise a child. Then you have getting all the infrastructure done on time and also convincing people that this is project that is going to be successful. It has nothing to do with Russia. When you start anything, people like to go to a place that is already a safe, established place. That, I think, is the primary challenge.”
How significant is this day, the start of the final year for the first intake of students?
“For me it is very significant how they perceive their experience and what they have learned. Because they are going to be our ambassadors. And they have to do very well. How well they do is going to make a difference. What we do to help them with their careers, where they go, what they do, these are going to be very important. Based on what I hear, the students have done very well. Over 40 percent are already entrepreneurs. And they have had a very positive experience here as well at the institutions where they spent some time. While they really enjoyed this experience, they also wanted to return to Russia. So that’s a very positive indicator.”
It’s the final year for Skoltech’s first intake of students. Do you doubt how successful they will be?
“I have no doubt. But that does not mean we should take it for granted. We should do our best to make sure we provide opportunities for them. To help them in their career placement.”
How is that process done?
“We are setting up a career placement office and discussing potential candidates to help us with it. This is something that we do in any university. But we are also looking at setting up mentorship programs. We don’t want to wait until a student graduates. We are setting up a program in the basic concepts of leadership so that will be an integral part of our operation.”
Has Skoltech been making waves abroad?
“Well I came to know about it even before I came here. It’s the Russian diaspora that knows about it. The conferences that I have attended across Europe and the U.S. – they know about Skoltech. But do they know about it as much as they should? No. That takes some time. I know, for example, KAUST [King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia – ed.] spent a lot of time on the promotional part. But KAUST needed it because no one associates Saudi Arabia with a strong intellectual tradition in recent centuries. Whereas, when you take Russia, Russia’s reputation as a giant in certain areas, this is unquestionable. And its accomplishments in education are unquestionable. And every Russian diaspora scientist that I have been familiar with, or worked with, before I came here, they are all outstanding in their fields. So that tradition helps. But my feeling is that the external community is looking at us closely because Russia is opening up and has been opening up in the last 20 years. So they are watching every step we take. And to me Skoltech doing well is important not only for Skoltech; it’s important for Russia. Because we want to be the portal to the rest of the world. And success is going to be a reflection of Russia’s commitment to this kind of project.”
Is Skoltech getting ahead of itself in the Russian education system? Do we first need to improve research institutions before creating an institution that applies this research?
“I think in many areas the middle step in Russia [the quality of research] is very strong. Sometimes it is not noticed if you don’t go to the third step [the innovation stage]. MIT is noticed not necessarily because of, in my opinion, all the new knowledge they have created – many other universities have created this better, in my opinion – but they have been able to do the third step, the innovation step, and that’s when you notice. There’s a book called Lonely Ideas [by Loren Graham, professor emeritus of the history of science at MIT], which talks about research and innovation in Russia. The point he makes if I remember correctly is that in many of the areas in which Russian claims to be a pioneer, like lasers and so forth, Russia has indeed been a pioneer. Except that very often, research ideas they came up with have not been taken to the next step. And so the first step [classical education], Russia is strong, the second step [research], there are many areas in which Russia is very strong. The third step: Russia is not as strong as a lot of other countries. And when we become strong on the innovations side, then what we are doing in the second step – creating knowledge – we will be known better.”
Appearing on the radar of trendsetters must be important for Skoltech.
“Unfortunately what dominates in the academic community and research community outside is the ratings of the Times of London, the QS Ratings, and the U.S. News and World Report – those are usually American universities. Those are to some extent popularity contests. For instance, Singapore, the university where I come from, is consistently in the top 30 internationally, and they’re good, but part of the reason is satisfying some of the criteria set for it being there. So the criteria include excellent academic work; excellent publications; excellent citations. In that, we do well, in the U.S. they do well, in Singapore they do well. But then there is also a component on how many international students there are; how many international faculties there are; and in some of those measures, Russia will not do well. And they carry substantial weight. And if you don’t have that part, the community out there doesn’t know you because you produce these people, they go elsewhere, and they naturally have an affiliation to their institution.”
And this affects the decision-making inside Skoltech as to how to allocate resources?
“Exactly.”
And this is a big part of your thinking right now?
So do you set yourself any performance targets, for example, to fall within the Times top 100 list by a certain date?
“We are thinking about that, but the thing is Skoltech, again, probably will not easily fall into the top 100 list unless you restrict the measure to publications, quality of publications and citations. Certainly today. But our component is innovation. That requires certain additional criteria. How many innovation-driven universities are there? We would probably get in the top five. Many there are only five. So we actually have to think about this: What are the new measures we need to put in? Not just we, but that we as a community need to include for this new class of universities. EPFL (+-) is an example. You can say the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology is also in this list. But there are very few such universities. There are very few that are taking this path. But to me, this is the future. This has to be a necessary component of the 21st century universities. So international ratings do not have a way of measuring it [the degree to which innovations are integrated into a university’s curriculum]. It’s not easy to measure, also. It may take 20 years before that really makes an impact.”
You could measure it by the number of international patents received by students of a particular establishment. Would you lobby international media to take these kinds of statistics into account?
“Yes, we would interact with these organizations; I even think these organizations are already thinking about these things. But I’m not necessarily convinced by these patents themselves. Patents are like publications. If you just count the number of publications, you just go to some other universities in China. They would do much better than Harvard [based on publications alone]. Much better than Stanford. Because of the sheer number. It’s almost like a sweatshop and they’re rewarded for every paper that they publish. There are papers and then there are papers. What makes an impact? One good example is the French mathematician Lois Bachelier. He came up with the concept of Brownian motion [the random motion of particles in a fluid], which Einstein gets the credit for, at least 15 years before Einstein did. Except that he wasn’t able to quote-unquote sell it. Maybe he was ahead of his time. He had come up with the mathematical process known as the Weiner process, a mathematical generalization of Brownian motion. But Einstein’s paper was published in 1905. And I think Bachelier published his paper a couple of decades earlier. So sometimes certain things catch, and sometimes certain things take time to catch. So it’s a difficult thing to publish high-quality papers. If you simply go by the number, it doesn’t help. In patents also, there are people who have 100 or 200 patents in the faculty. Not here, but in universities I know. But there are people with only four or five patents that made a difference.”
So by striving to check all these established boxes, to some extent you imperil the quest to integrate what the university is trying to achieve into the general economy?
“Yes. But you have to constantly, periodically focus on each of them. And then you have to step back to make sure that these are going into your overall plan in the correct mix. With the correct emphasis.”
That’s a difficult job.
“Oh, it’s a difficult job. I think that it’s more an art than a science.”
You’re feeling your way in the dark with this project. That’s exciting.
“It is exciting.”