KSU Mission

Kazan University carefully preserves the 200-year old traditions of its world-renowned research schools and its centuries-old reputation for outstanding academic achievement and innovation. Through a rich interdisciplinary curriculum, the university encourages its students to become creative and independent thinkers, lifetime learners, and active participants in society. The university emphasizes respect for, and sensitivity to, differences among people and ideas.

Many institutions of higher education today are facing the principal challenges of growing student numbers, the need to diversify study programs, the relative withdrawal of the state from university funding and the internationalizing demands of the increasingly globalized environment. This is the context within which Kazan State University is developing its innovative institutional plan while staying true to its traditional and renowned principles of quality rather than quantity.

While KSU is keen to complement classical disciplinary structures with new departments and to support new interdisciplinary academic areas, it is not going to radically increase the number of its students. The University has two campuses outside Kazan, one in the city of Naberezhniye Chelny, where the famous KAMAZ automobile company is based, and one in its suburb Zelenodolsk. Together, they add another 4,000 students to the 13,000 based in Kazan. The number of such campuses is unlikely to increase. However, KSU sees other ways of serving greater numbers of people and that is primarily via continued-learning courses and distance-learning, as well as through the further strengthening of its national role as a centre for university faculty development.

The University is not planning to go fully commercial or to proceed to an exclusively fee-based system. It is exploring other resources to provide still better professor-to-student ratios by improving teaching job opportunities for the most talented young researchers. In these ways, KSU aims to embrace the brightest of the young generation, in every way supporting their search for knowledge. KSU advocates new approaches to funding talented but .nancially-deprived young people, while meeting the lifelong needs of a diversity of students and maintaining our traditional non-discrimination policies.

Given the clarity of priorities, the University is encouraging a number of its think-tanks to elaborate a set of new academic, cultural and managerial strategies for the .rst part of its third century. These will be based on the following ideas.

Proud of its unique historical role in the enlightenment of the peoples of Eurasia, Kazan State University considers itself a national leader in Russian education and science, meeting the highest international standards of research and teaching and committed to the development of harmony between human beings, nature and society.

Guided by the ideals of scienti.c truth, creative liberty and good citizenship, the University contributes to the formation of the knowledge society and to sustainable development of individuals, the region, the country and the world.

Respecting the principles of equal opportunity and academic meritocracy, the University encourages the spirit of innovation, internationalization and interdisciplinarity, fostering high professionalism and competitiveness amongst its alumni and stimulating their life-long learning.

No country can develop a successful postindustrial economy and a democratic culture without signi.cant development of its universities. This is especially true of Russia, a country characterized by both respect for the high Humboldtian tradition and a heightened sensibility toward the processes of the country's new cultural and political identi.cation and economic liberalization. This is an understanding which stays in line with KSU's democratic traditions, the fondness of our students and professors for thinking critically and our strong internationalization drive. Creative approaches to gathering new resources and their careful use can be learned via further international educational, staff upgrading and administrative projects, and fundraising practices. These activities are also preparing the University for a generational change based on breakthrough areas of international research from molecular genetics to computer linguistics and from nanotechnologies to cultural studies.

KSU will continue to build vigorously on its special role in the Republic of Tatarstan, one of the most important regions in Russia. To put this another way, being a historical cornerstone of modern Russian statehood, Kazan State University serves as a symbol of the international importance of Tatarstan.