School of Advanced Studies
School of Advanced Studies is a greenfield liberal arts and sciences institution at the University of Tyumen, Siberia, Russia, focusing on both teaching and multidisciplinary research.
The School was established in September 2017, with a liberal arts college model as its basis. The School is the second of its kind in Russia, after the Smolny College. SAS was developed in the framework of the University of Tyumen’s strategy within the 5-100 Project. The School combines three major fields of study: social sciences, arts and humanities, and life sciences. The BA and MA programs offered by SAS are in English, though some courses are also available in Russian.
Academics
SAS faculty are a combination of full-time professors and visiting professors. Full-time professors are on a three year contract. They are paid a subsistence level base salary. The remaining 80% of their salary is made up of performance bonuses which are automatically removed if they fail the annual external peer review.Undergraduate education
In terms of the undergraduate education model, SAS is an honors college within the University of Tyumen.During the first two years, students follow the core curriculum and also take elective courses. Afterwards, students declare one of the seven majors: Information Technology and Digital Society, Cultural Studies, Life Sciences, Economics, Film and Media Studies, Historical Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology. Additionally, students complete one of the minors.
Graduate education
Currently, SAS is running one professional Master’s program: Master of Arts in Digital Cultures and Media Production, with the other one, Master of Arts in Experimental Higher Education, to be launched in the Fall of 2020.Research
SAS research is carried out in multidisciplinary research teams. In 2020, there were five research teams operating within SAS.Tuition
SAS offers a combination of state-funded, university-funded, and places with a tuition fee. Additionally, the best students according to the academic rating, receive scholarships.Academic calendar
The academic year at SAS is divided into four quarters.Faculty hiring model
Faculty are selected via the Project Design Session cluster hiring process, based on how they perform in multidisciplinary teamwork exercises.Outreach
During the academic year, SAS offers open courses twice a week, which are free for the public to attend, are recorded and published on the School’s youtube channel. Every summer, SAS runs a summer school for high-school students.Network memberships
SAS is a member of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, which currently has a membership of over 250 organisations around the world.Building
SAS has a separate building, renovated in 2017. Apart from the School itself, there is a nonfiction bookstore and a café in the building.Controversy
SAS has been described as an "academic sweatshop" and an "abusive institution" by a former faculty member who canvassed the opinions of her colleagues and students for an article in openDemocracy.. This article has been widely discussed in academic circles within Russia and beyond. In these discussions SAS has been criticised for not being open about the fact that it is run by faculty from Skolkovo Management School in Moscow, according to principles derived from soviet-era management guru Georgi Shchedrovitsky. Skolkovo Management School is a private business school which is involved in training university and corporate management teams across Russia and uses, in its organization of teamwork, elements of Shchedrovitsky methodology. It is said on the Carnegie Moscow Center website that "Shchedrovitsky essentially viewed human beings as machines that must be programed to perform certain functions—essentially, the theory of “social engineering.”However, the director of SAS, whose SKOLKOVO affiliation has now been included on his SAS bio in response to criticism that he concealed it, claims he has never been an adept of this management theory, that it only has a limited following at SKOLKOVO and is not nearly as radical as Carnegie center suggests. Although he has never himself been a faculty member in a liberal arts college, he says his vision of education and research was formed as a graduate student at St. Petersburg State University, at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as during his postdoc years at Columbia University and the University of Sheffield. He has described it as an "anti-human" philosophy in conversation with faculty, and compares it to the methods used in World Series Baseball by the Brad Pitt character in Moneyball. It is a model based on high attrition rates among students and faculty in order to find people willing to suppress their individuality as researchers in conformity with a rigidly abstract formula.
SAS faculty are generally very unhappy about their jobs, as evidenced by the fact that 75% of the founding cohort left, were fired, or failed to have their contracts renewed in the first three years. However, the dire nature of the academic job market means SAS has a growing body of international faculty. A less critical analysis of SAS has recently been published by a team of Stanford graduate students who interviewed management-approved faculty and administrators under the title "Reimagining Russian Higher Education". Current SAS faculty are contractually prohibited from publicly criticising the school and most have chosen to stay silent about the controversy surrounding it. Those who did speak out did not have their contracts renewed. SAS has internal machinery devoted to cleaning the internet of the kind of critical commentary that is rife on social media; posting counterfeit testimonials; and misleading independent journalism such as the article '"Go big or go home" - My first teaching experience', written for a blog edited by the SAS Education Director, by an adjunct faculty member whom he hired to cover a teacher-shortage created by the school's brutal measures against its own faculty; or 'A Bold Move in Multidisciplinarity and Academic Hiring' written by a SKOLKOVO employee for University World News.