The opening ceremony for the Engineering Institute established by the Bauman MSTU and the Harbin Polytechnic University (HPU) took place in Harbin (Heilongjiang province, North-East China), which became a new achievement in the cooperation between China and Russia in the educational field.
This new institute offers full-time educational programme. HPU will be responsible for enrollment of Chinese students, and the Bauman MSTU — for enrollment of students from Russia and other CIS countries. Students will be enrolled in both universities, which will jointly carry out their education. In addition, as part of the Institute activities, the parties will share such resources as teaching staff, education courses and teaching aids, training programmes for specialists etc.
'The joint Institute will make it possible to use the human and educational potential of both our University and the Harbin Polytechnic University', said Mikhail Kuznetsov, Vice-rector for international relations, Bauman MSTU, in the interview to a Xinhua correspondent, adding that joint educational programmes are designed to use the best resources of the universities to teach students. According to the plan, the new Institute will begin to enroll students this autumn. During the first year of the Institute's operation, two bachelor's specialties will be opened — materials science and industrial ecology. In the future, other technical specialties will be gradually opened.
According to the HPU, students in the new Institute will be taught in the '2+2' format: during the first two years students will study at the University that enrolled them, and during the next two years students will swap Universities.
Students of the joint Institute will study foreign languages, mandatory and optional disciplines according to the chosen specialty, etc. Upon the graduation from the Institute, students will receive two diplomas — from HPU and Bauman MSTU .
Back in March 2011, according to a joint initiative of the HPU and the Bauman MSTU, the Association of Sino-Russian Technical Universities (ASRTU) was established. Relying upon the Association, the MSTU-HPU Engineering Institute will attract Chinese and Russian experts in the field of science and education and train qualified personnel for the socio-economic development of two countries.
In recent years, 9 universities of Heilongjiang province and 11 Russian universities have been carrying out 22 joint teaching projects attracting more than a thousand students each year. The creation of such platforms for the development of educational exchanges as Confucius Institutes and Russian Language Centres laid the foundation for a deeper cooperation between China and Russia in the field of education.