Students to present their start-up instead of a thesis

Students at all Russian universities are to be allowed the option of presenting a start-up that they have launched instead of submitting a traditional masters thesis, the Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education has announced.

While some students can already exercise this option, steps will be taken to roll the option out across Russia in 2019 to make it universally available. However, experts warn that this idea may turn out to be too novel for the Russian education system, which may struggle to implement it, according to a report disseminated by Project 5-100.

A ministry spokesperson told Izvestia that university students will be taught how to present start-ups as their final projects, with faculty receiving guidance on how to supervise these activities. Work on setting up such training courses, as envisaged by the national Digital Economy Program, will begin this year.

The report suggests that no legislative changes are required because existing procedures for awarding academic degrees make it possible for a start-up to be treated as equivalent to an ordinary final project.

Currently, more than 1,000 higher education institutions in Russia accept only traditional theses but as many as 71 have already embraced the start-up option, ministry data shows.

For example, the Russian Venture Company, which provides facilities for the Technology Project Management Department of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, reports that completing a tech start-up project is an integral part of a masters thesis for technology project management students, who train as venture fund analysts, innovation experts and technology entrepreneurs.

Other higher learning institutions that have taken up the initiative are ITMO University, Far Eastern Federal University and Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.

Far Eastern Federal University first accepted a student's start-up as a final project in 2017. This venture is now a tenant at the Skolkovo Technopark in Moscow and has raised RUB10 million (US$152,000) in investment, according to the Project 5-100 report.

The Plekhanov Russian University of Economics also allows students in some fields to present their start-ups instead of defending a thesis. Successful start-up projects implemented by its students include a children's robotics university, a fruit and vegetable wholesaler, a fantasy camp for kids and a pay-per-minute café dubbed an ‘anti-café’.

‘Revolutionary’ idea

Petr Karasev, vice-rector for education and methodology work (vice-president for academics) at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, told University World News this practice is “extremely important” to the transformation of the Russian economy and its higher education system.

He said educational technologies are changing, as is the labour market, offering “promising new professions to changing generations of students”.

“We believe the start-ups scheme could be relevant, not in all areas of higher education, but useful for economics, management and technology specialities,” he said.

He added that according to recent statistics from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the start-ups scheme is already used in 71 universities across the country.

“However, each university establishes its own requirements for the state final attestation programme, and, consequently, for the preparation of a final work. In reality, start-ups at present could not replace traditional state exams at Russian universities,” he said.

Karasev believes it would be appropriate for students from different departments to work together to establish start-ups, which means that before long we may see interdisciplinary start-up projects defended by groups of students.

He also suggested that, as setting up a business takes more time than is currently allowed for preparing a thesis, curricula and schedules will have to be revised to incorporate the new option.

Students at Moscow's National Research University Higher School of Economics cannot yet opt to substitute a traditional thesis with the presentation of a start-up they have launched, while those at Saint Petersburg State University will be allowed to do so from the current academic year onwards, according to the Project 5-100 report.

Sergey Komkov, president of the All-Russian Education Foundation, said the ministry's idea was “interesting and noteworthy”. But he said in order for it to work, assessment criteria for graduate projects need to be determined, helping to evaluate, for instance, organisational skills and professional expertise, according to the Project 5-100 report.

Since the ‘startup-as-thesis’ option does not exist at European universities, Russia has a chance to become a trailblazer, he said. Also, students who have started their own business in a field that matches their educational qualifications are more likely to “stay in the profession”, he added.

Degree-career mismatch

A study conducted last summer by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration revealed that only 37% of young graduates were pursuing a career in the field that matched their university, vocational school and technical college education. Another 29% said that their job had “some relation” to their education, while for 27% the education-occupation mismatch was complete.

In an effort both to encourage young people to seek a job in the profession they were trained in and to tackle Russia's drastic shortage of technological entrepreneurs, Tomsk State University and a domestic venture capital company, TechnoSpark, have launched a programme for training tech start-up managers, called Startup Experience.

Tomsk State University President Eduard Galazhinsky believes that if Russia is to make a technological leap forward, hundreds of start-ups should spring up in each of its regions to produce eventually dozens of viable businesses, according to the Project 5-100 report.

The TechnoSpark founders came up with the idea of training would-be tech entrepreneurs. CEO Denis Kovalevich says that his company acts both as a start-up studio with a portfolio of 120 projects and a venture capitalist.

Startup Experience scours Russian universities for entrepreneurially minded students capable of building up and managing businesses. TechnoSpark offers them ready-made preliminary project plans for start-ups in areas ranging from flexible solar panels to IoT (Internet of Things) sensors to genomics, all appropriately funded.

Entrepreneurial aptitude

Kovalevich emphasised that it is not best-performing students who are selected but those have the aptitude to become technological entrepreneurs.

Galazhinsky said it is not only engineering and applied science students who can enrol in the programme; humanities undergraduates are also welcome.

“What is required of a participant,” he says, “is first and foremost a desire to start a business and a readiness to take on the associated risks. Therefore, the programme is open to applicants from such departments as biology, linguistics and journalism, to name but a few.

“There will be an individually tailored learning path for every student who has been drafted into the programme. Their business internship over, they will use their experience as entrepreneurs to complete their final project. Applying university-acquired skills to business development is an important part of education,” Galazhinsky said.

The participants' performance during their nine-month stint as entrepreneurs and their graduate research thesis that should draw on this experience will be evaluated by a board made up of Tomsk State University faculty, TechnoSpark staff and industry experts.