Vladimir Zernov: “Many Russian students are aging unnaturally fast”

Frantz Klintsevich, сhairman of the Central Council of the “United Russia” partisans and a member of the Russian State Duma, Grigory Balykhin, сhairman of the State Duma Committee on Education and Science, Stanislav Naumov, vice-president of the Skolkovo Foundation, Vladimmir Zernov, rector of the Russian New University (RosNOU) and chairman of the Russian Non-government Universities Association (ANVUZ), Anthony Shvindt, chairman of the All-Russian Student Union, and Arthur Zakharyan, director of the “Info-VUZ” Project, took part in the meetings of the Forum.

- Frantz Klintsevich said:”Representatives of more than a hundred of leading Russian Universities are taking part in the conference. The Forum brought together senior government officials, politicians and businessmen. There has never been held such an event in our country before. We expect young people to speak about their problems as they envisage them. – I do promise that we will offer all necessary facilities to help solve most of these problems as soon as possible. We hope that those present at the Forum will collaborate in solving them”.

The participants of the meeting spoke about the need for extensive IT technologies implementation. It was one of the most topical issues at the Forum.

Vladimmir Zernov said:” Nowadays, we can hardly ignore the modern world reality. Even if some people do not like it, there is no getting away from it. Either we accept this reality and keep pace with the times, or we risk falling far behind. IT-technologies are an inherent part of modern life and it is impossible to cope with any problem without them, I mean, for example, some problems of our young generation’s health. RosNOU offers special medical equipment that can determine any person’s biological age. When a 17-year-old student comes for a check-up and the examination shows that his biological age is about 40 years, it is time to sound the alarm, which means that our young people should pay more attention to their health, rule out alcoholic drinks and go in for sports. Many Russian students turn out to be aging unnaturally fast. But for IT- technologies we could not have detected underlying problems.

Grigory Balykhin pointed out:”This Forum is an unprecedented event in the history of the Russian students movement. I wish we scrutinized the issues that are crucial to our students. We need to find effective means for meeting them. And it would be great if we share ideas concerning a new Federal Law in draft on Education. I hope that eventually a law that could suit everybody, including representatives of higher education institutions will be passed.