Official website of the President of Russia

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President Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, dear friends,

Today’s ceremony marks the start of construction of the St Petersburg State University Higher School of Management’s new campus.

Like the Moscow School of Management in Skolkovo, this is a completely new kind of educational establishment based on the most advanced standards in business education. It will become a major centre for training senior management and, we hope, will provide worthy competition to the world’s best business schools.

The creation of an educational establishment of this kind will make an undoubted positive contribution to developing the national economy. The school’s graduates will find themselves having to tackle and resolve the practical and real problems of business life. They will have to act independently to stand up for Russia’s interests on world markets. As well as professional and specialised training and practical knowledge, this calls for the current buzzwords of leadership qualities and entrepreneurial talent, and it also calls for a solid fundamental education, of course.

It is precisely this approach, the ability to provide a fundamental and academic foundation, that will be the St Petersburg Management School’s strong point. This is not by chance, for the school is being established with the active involvement of St Petersburg State University, a university with unique historical traditions. It is very important today to blend these traditions with modern educational methods and the experience of world business education and create a base on which to develop our own innovative programmes and methods.

A project of this scale obviously requires considerable investment. More than 1.5 billion roubles of federal budget money will be invested in the project over the first two years alone (2006 and 2007). Furthermore, money will also be raised from funds with targeted capital set up by the business community.

We hope that the partnership between the state and the business community will not end here. We hope that the business community will take part in drawing up education standards and in developing a system of education credits. I hope that major companies will be able to provide the base for future internships too.

I am convinced that only in this way, only though cooperation between the state, the business community and the education community, can we ensure that such projects are genuinely prestigious and attractive for students.

I would like to congratulate everyone who is involved in today’s event and wish the project success.

This new educational centre is celebrating its birth at the same time as we are marking 100 years since the birth of Academician Likhachev. I think it is fitting to recall the words Dmitry Sergeyevich [Likhachev] spoke at one of St Petersburg’s universities when he said that the future of Russia’s universities will be great, calm and of paramount significance in Europe.

I congratulate you on today’s occasion.

Thank you for your attention.