Public education programs may change the urban context

The creation of an innovation/education cluster is one of the priority aspects of the development of a post-industrial economy in the region laid out by the Perm 3.0 project. The participants in the “education and humanitarian innovations” group consisted what conditions are necessary for this plan to be realized.

The moderator of the group, Nikolay Karpushin, the Minister of Education of Perm Region, contents that there are a variety of educational initiatives that might promote a positive trend in the development of the entire area, such as the creation of an international humanities university or an engineering campus attached to the local Polytechnic University.

“Making a campus into an environment where innovations are generated requires time and resources”, said Anatoliy Tashkinov, Rector of Perm National Research Polytechnic University. “We have defined high priority areas for development: the aerospace industry, the nanotechnolgy industry, oil and gas processing, urban design, laser and fiberglass technology. Perm can become the Russian center of the development of these technologies”.

Nataliya Tipenko, the General Director of the Center for Universal Programs, argued that Perm is already characterized by socioeconomic innovation. Specific educational proposals formulated in the Perm experimental innovation incubator are now being applied on a national scale. However, for a product to be technologically advanced and ready for widespread circulation, there must be a strategy for promoting it. Today Perm does not always make the best use of its strong points on the federal level; in Tipenko’s opinion it is precisely here that the reserves for the development of an educational cluster must be found.

Lyudmila Gadzhieva, the Head of the Department of Education of Perm, described the idea of creating schools organized as communities devoted to specific professions. Plans are already in place for a several such schools: an “IT School”, a “School of Biomedicine” and a “Smart School”. What will set them apart is that the knowledge that graduates from such highly specialized educational institutions will acquire is extremely practical. Pavel Mikov, the Commissioner for Children's Rights in the Perm Region added that experimental schools should also be created; the people trusted with overseeing the pupils' education would be university professors, and the administrators would play the role of functionaries and executives.

Interaction between residents and schools and universities, open professional conferences, involving the media in the process of education — these are the trends for the future, according to Darya Paramonova, SENSEable City Moscow Theme Supervisor of the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design. “Public programs — that is what can change the context of the entire city. Knowledge cannot be enclosed or isolated, it must become part of society”, she emphasized.

The discussion of ways of creating an innovation/education cluster in Perm to provide the new economy with qualified human resources led the participants to understand that it is also necessary to establish schools for contemporary instructors and develop the European Lifelong Learning system in Russia.