The Times Higher Education made a big play about “solidarity with Ukraine, and our rejection of Russia’s aggression” back on 2 March, 2022 and said they will keep the situation under constant review. Despite all that has happened since then nothing seems to have changed in the THE response and they continue to promote Russian universities in their current league tables. They seem to have taken no action at all to reduce the THE Student promotion of Russian universities with detailed information about the institutions being routed through their partner in inaction Study Portals.
It’s a little like a Matryoshka (commonly known as Russian) Doll where the parts are nested inside each other so you can’t see the entire thing at once. The start is when a student searches on the THE Student site and finds that there are 359 courses in the Russian Federation and they are all given equal prominence to any other course.
The curious student clicks a specific course, say on Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and finds that they can study this in Russia. The neat trick is that they have to go off to the Study Portals site to pursue their enquiries so THE can presumably say it is not having specific publicity about the institution on its site.
A month or so ago Study Portals said it was “terrified and upset at our core seeing the war in Ukraine unfold” but was cautious to not say anything about taking action to even reduce the prominence of Russian universities on its website. So here is the link from THE Student promoting study at Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU).
It probably goes without saying that Andrey I. Rudskoy, Rector of the University is one of the signatories to the infamous statement from the Russian Union of Rectors saying it is “..very important these days to support our country, our army, which defends our security, to support our President…”
Rector Rudskoy also comments in an interview that league table rankings are “a marketing tool for attracting external audiences and working with academic reputation”. His position echoes that of the Russian government in their desire for credibility and prestige through rankings. So it is no real surprise to see Study Portals focus on its rankings position.
And then the whole circle becomes complete with the list of league table rankings which Study Portals will be able to continue even if the Ukraine war goes on until next year because the THE are doing nothing to suspend Russian universities from their rankings. QS and US News and World Report also continue to promote the institutions.
To compound matters Study Portals has no compunction about promoting Russia as a study destination.
The page goes on to tell us about Russians who have become globally famous. “From athletes like Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova, to composers like Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, or Shostakovich, to great authors like Nabokov, and Dostoyevsky (and all other “-evsky”s, and “-ov”s and “-ova”s), Russia gave us of the most influential people in history.”
Sharp eyed observers will note that of the two living people one became a US citizen in 2010 and the other has lived in the US since she was seven. The others are all dead and there is a conspicuous failure to mention the Russian who is the most globally influential and notorious at the current time. The word omission in the sentence probably reflects the care and attention to detail but does nothing to hide the flimsiness of the insight.
That’s it really. There are no notes on any of the pages to suggest that students might be wary of attending a country where they can be carted off to jail for using the world “war”. No reflection of the “assault on academic freedom” in Russia has accelerated in recent years with universities having their licenses suspended, students expelled, Government control of foreign academic collaboration and prevented academics attending international conferences.
Matryoshka dolls are often carved to reflect a theme and embody the concept of an idea within an idea. The idea that THE Student and Study Portals seem to be capturing is that everything is normal and there is no reason to raise realities or suggest that anything is amiss. That seems quite wrong.