Boris Nuraliev, the founder of the 1C IT company, proposed changing the location of educational blocks for programming students in Russian universities in such a way that they study applied IT disciplines in 1–2 years, and related basic subjects in 3–4 years. According to him, this initiative is being discussed with the Ministry of Education, but he did not specify what status these consultations are in, and how long they have been ongoing.
According to Nuraliyev, this approach will not require any reduction in any hours in the curriculum, but will allow students, who often go to work part-time from the 1st or 2nd year, skipping classes in basic disciplines, to gain experience in IT companies on official grounds. With this approach, the founder of 1C believes, the student will not receive knowledge that is divorced from the current state of affairs, and will be able to immediately put into practice the acquired applied knowledge of IT, and will also gain official experience from the 1st year.
Nuraliev explained to Vedomosti that this approach would allow students to be sent on internships at IT companies “for at least six months.” And for the final result of his work in a particular IT company, a student should receive a fair salary, the founder of the company believes. “Almost all IT students work from the second year onwards, because the profession is like this: it is easy to enter and does not require special equipment, only a computer. Some universities are trying to ban it, but this is impossible,” he explained.
Vedomosti sent a request to the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Ministry of Education and Science.
Companies are indeed now hiring students – this is a common story, confirms Luka Safonov, technical director of JSC Sinklit. “If a person is at least something of himself, they take him, teach him, prepare him for himself. There are no personnel on the market at all, they need to be raised,” he adds. For example, Kaspersky Lab takes students for internships, regardless of their course, confirms the manager of educational programs Yulia Feoktistova. According to her, more than 50% of the interns who were hired over the past 5 years remained in the company and moved from Junior to Middle, Senior and Lead positions.
“All interns participate in the work on projects on an equal basis with the rest of the team and are responsible for their block of tasks, so for us interns are colleagues who bring real results. This is also a chance to dive deeper into one of the directions and see if it suits you,” she says.
A student of any course and even a schoolboy can get an internship, and sometimes a full-time job at Basalt SPO, agrees Aleksey Smirnov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Basalt SPO. “For us, real knowledge and ability is important, not a graduation document,” he adds.
However, most Russian companies are not ready to take novice specialists for internships, as this is associated with high costs for their training on the spot, Konstantin Sakhnov, founder of the Vengeance Games studio, disagrees. “The internship can be paid for very easily, but the time for experienced specialists who will have to be diverted from production to train newcomers is something that companies were not ready to go for and for the most part will not,” he said.
To prepare a programmer who solves standard simple tasks, it is not necessary to rebuild the system of higher education, it is enough to use the existing system of secondary vocational education, Smirnov believes. To get started, programmers in most cases will have enough secondary vocational education or even annual courses, agrees with him an independent information security expert Alexei Lukatsky. However, analysts, designers and architects, according to him, need to receive higher education, but starting with general disciplines and then deepening into the profession. “It’s one thing to program games, another thing is a warehouse automation system, information security tool or control of a gas distribution station,” explains Lukatsky.
Karen Kazaryan, Chief Analyst of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC), also speaks about the need to develop the direction of secondary specialized training of programmers: “Mid-level specialists are now in demand on the market, and additional subjects may not be useful to them.” The expert does not consider it logical to change the places in the program of basic subjects and applied IT-disciplines.
“High-class specialists really need basic knowledge at least in mathematical subjects,” he explains. According to Kazaryan, it is now more important to update the disciplines on the basics of algorithmization and programming, to start teaching popular programming languages and to give students practical tasks that are closer to reality.
However, programs in universities quickly become outdated, Luka Safonov believes: “The political paradigm in which we now live is not taken into account in the curricula. For example, no one focuses on import substitution. The plans are in no way consistent with the decrees of the government and industry regulators in the field of personal data protection, informatization, etc. Nobody can do it.” Due to outdated programs at universities and the general isolation of education from business tasks, companies have to retrain graduates on average throughout the year, adds Kazarian.