Mikhail Gutseriev :” If the young have no opportunities for social growth they become aggressive”

- In my company employees always progress  up the carrier ladder. If a vice-president quits – the director of the department comes to his post, if the head of a department quits – his deputy takes his place. A specialist cannot not to become a chief specialist in due time. It can’t be otherwise.
What is the use of the projects of higher educational institutes and busines cooperation?

- These are investments in the future. Why did the Soviet Union achieve unparalleled success both in the oil branch, and in the space and aviation industry? Why were these achievements  possible in spite of “iron curtain” regime? Because of systematic personnel training which existed at the time.
What I think very important in these projects, is that young people from common families get the opportunity to study at the best universities of the country – talented young people, or, maybe, just diligent ones. If the young have no opportunities for social growth, they become aggressive. We all know what the results  may  be.

-Do you sponsor only higher educational institutions, or maybe, there are some projects for schools?

- I have built several schools in my life. All of them at the Caucasus. This is the region where schools are really necessary. After the collapse of the USSR problems of formal education are still existing there. In the mid of the 90ths  I financed the project “Step by step” (the project of a group of well-known Russian pedagogues-innovators for publishing of alternative and supplementary aids for schools-“MN”). But at present I am not very well informed about the situation in formal education.

- You must have heard President Medvedev’s plea to major businessmen to come to schools and tell the teenagers their success stories. Will you answer the call?

- It’s a complicated subject. I wouldn’t like anybody to repeat my success story. It was constant  struggle, and this success brought me suffering. Sometimes I lecture – on business, on specific nature of Russian business. But mostly these are banks that invite me – both Russian and foreign ones.

- What do you, as a representative of large-scale busieness, think of the present-day Russian education? What would you change?

- Nowadays both schools and universities lack consistency and severity, discipline. My son Said has recently graduated from Oxford, Department of Geology, and I can compare his present level  to mine. I remember myself at 22, and I can say that I was stronger than he is. My level of training, my volume of knowledge I had at the time were higher. His knowledge is amorphous, tenuous. I like Soviet system of education. I see all those scandals around USE and I think that conventional exams seem more  rational. In the 70ths we did real work preparing for the exams. I remember writing cribs, my father used to get coaches to teach me algebra. But we were training seriously, we grinded at all the subjects, so that I remember all the equations and formulas even now. 

 Author – Yevgeni Nasyrov