Dmitry Livanov: Federal universities should have an opportunity to host Olympiads

With Dmitry Livanov, the Minister of Education and Science, in the chair, the meeting of the Russian Rectors' Union and the Russian Council of School Olympiads took place in Moscow on June 29th.

According to Ilshat Gafurov one of the main questions was the approval of the full list of Russia-wide and regional school olympiads. The discussion covered the venues for olympiads, their level, evaluation criteria and an ability to use the results by admission offices of Russian universities.
Regional and inter-regional olympiads used to be under the premises of universities. We need to restore this practice and students' stellar-results will be used during admission period only by the institutions within the region of the olympiad. This will help us to prevent brain drain to the capital or other regions. Fortunately, Kazan Federal does not face such issues, and annually we recruit the desirable amount of students with high EGE (Unified State Exam), winners of different contests e t.c. 

High school students treat these contests not only as a gate to the university, but also as an intellectual challenge and an opportunity to reveal hidden talents, to solve off-standard tasks highlighted the Minister, therefore important to design a sufficient system to support young wunderkinds.