Published on: 2026-09-08
Source: Official website of the State –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
Source: “The Rector Speaks”
“It is important for us to know which specialists the state will need for decades to come”: an interview with Vladimir Stroev, Rector of the State University of Management.
The State University of Management is one of the few in the country to train managers with industry specialization, rather than just “universal managers.”
In its educational model, the university supports student startup projects that potential employers have access to. The best of these initiatives are bought by various companies, allowing students to receive job offers even before receiving their diploma.
We talked with the rector about the traditions and modern opportunities of management education.
“Managers in construction, estimators generally don’t have time to finish their studies; they are already working by their fourth year. By the way, I am against this, but the situation is such that today this is a scarce specialty in all leading corporations.”
— Vladimir Vitalyevich, the State University of Management, as is clear from its name, has been training specialists in the field of management. And for more than a hundred years. But at the beginning of the last century, the concepts of “manager” and “administrator” did not exist. Whom did the university originally graduate?
— There are discrepancies in the counting of the university’s existence. During the Soviet period, it was accepted to consider that the university’s history began with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s decree of 1919 on the creation of a commercial institute in Moscow. From that date, the university’s age was counted. However, the university was opened on the basis of the Aleksandrov Commercial School, where merchants were trained since 1880. Its Board of Trustees included the best representatives of Moscow’s merchant class, and it was headed by P. M. Tretyakov himself (merchant, entrepreneur, philanthropist, art collector — Editor’s note). This was a school for the first and best entrepreneurs of that time. Therefore, we count our history from 1880.
By 1930, at the start of the first five-year plan, the People’s Commissar of Heavy Industry Sergo Ordzhonikidze was tasked with creating a school for training managers of new enterprises based on one of the universities. Our university was chosen, which from that moment became known as the Moscow Engineering and Economic Institute.
In fact, it was Ordzhonikidze who, on the eve of the war, established a system of sectoral managerial education that trained leaders of various levels for specific industrial sectors. After the war, the university continued to train sectoral leaders for the country’s economic recovery, producing many prominent figures known both now and in the past who formed the core of the ruling elite. These were not just managers, as they might be called today; they were practitioners with clear specializations.
Our university has always been directly involved in the production process and sectoral management, and not only in terms of workforce training. Many progressive forms originated within its walls, which are by no means typical of the humanities education, as might be assumed from the university’s current name. The first faculty of cybernetics was established precisely at our university, as were the country’s first departments of personnel management, economic management mechanisms, and entrepreneurship. By the way, at our university, departments are still named according to their profile: management in transport, construction, mechanical engineering, the fuel and energy complex, and so on.
Today, the demand for such specialists is enormous. Our graduates are snapped up immediately on the job market. Managers in construction and estimators often do not even finish their studies; they are already working by their fourth year. By the way, I am against this, but the situation is such that today this is a scarce specialty in all leading corporations. Managers in transport are in high demand because all our lives are now connected to logistics.
Employers ask us questions: “Why do you enroll one or two groups, why not 1,000 people per course?” The demand for these specialists is so great. However, we want to maintain the quality of education at a high level and, as before, train professionals we will be proud of as our graduates.
— Has the proportion of Muscovites and regional residents coming to you changed? What does the trend in these indicators tell you?
— More than half of our students are from other cities. This is largely due to the fact that we have our own campus. We have inherited a great legacy from previous leaders: a perfect location, two dormitories (we are currently building a third), all buildings nearby, a sports complex, a stadium, a swimming pool, various centers — all on one territory. Not all universities in Moscow have this.
At the same time, the number of Muscovites among the applicants has also increased in recent years. I think this is influenced by the issue of purchasing power.
Moreover, several years ago, in collaboration with the Moscow Government, we started conducting entrepreneurship classes in Moscow schools, and since last year, they have begun graduating students. We also associate the growth in the number of Moscow applicants with this.
— At the same time, similar areas of training exist in other universities in Moscow as well.
“Yes, but only a small number of universities specialize in industry-specific managerial education. The demand for personnel today is so great, not only in Moscow but also in other regions, that universities sometimes simply do not have the capacity to fill the shortages. I am a member of the State Council Commission on Personnel under the President and regularly hear about these requests.”
“We cannot restructure the educational process on the fly, and especially cannot afford in the current realities to work ‘blindly.’ Continuous interaction with the employer gives us the opportunity to adjust training directions, particularly closer to the end of the education, when disciplines can be adapted to the needs of a specific industry.”
— To update educational programs, it is important for the university to understand which specialists the economy needs. But employers are not always able to clearly formulate the requirements for graduates and often expect versatile specialists who “can do everything.” Since your graduates are so in demand, does that mean this question is resolved for you?
— Of course not, this is an absolutely relevant issue for us. To avoid any illusions, I’ll say it straight. The university environment and employers are two poles, each with its own interests. Today there is much talk about business actively cooperating with universities, but in reality only a small percentage of companies and corporations truly want to participate in the process of training specialists.
A few years ago, most employers held the position regarding universities: “We don’t care how you train personnel, we will buy them and then train them ourselves.” Various corporate universities were created, where companies supplemented the education of those whom they believed were undertrained at universities or who were given outdated knowledge during the four years of their bachelor’s degree.
Right now, a much more global issue is on the agenda: to determine which specialists and fields the state will need 10, 15, 20 years from now.
It is important for us to clearly know whom we will be training for industry, management, and government authorities for a period of one to two decades. The educational environment is very inert, and the university is a large structure with certain planning and funding. We cannot rebuild the educational process on the fly, and moreover, we cannot afford to work “blindly” under the current circumstances. Constant interaction with employers gives us the opportunity to adjust training directions, especially closer to the end of the studies, when disciplines can be adapted to the needs of a specific industry.
Our graduates are in demand precisely because they are trained for specific directions and structures, exactly for the tasks they immediately start working on in the company without additional training.
— How exactly do you translate the real staffing needs of enterprises into the content of educational programs?
— Through a separate educational track in the format of project-based learning. We consciously adopted this more than five years ago and have been implementing it ever since.
Today, absolutely all students who join us, regardless of the specialty they choose, go through project-based learning. One day a week is dedicated to project work: students are divided into groups and carry out projects which they later defend. As a rule, each such group is assigned a mentor from a specific enterprise, company, or government body who gives them an assignment. The project is carried out like a student startup, which is then posted on our showcase platform where employers can purchase it along with the execution team. The best youth entrepreneurial initiatives are adopted by various corporations, and often students get jobs thanks to this even before receiving their diploma.
Project-based learning has proven even more effective due to the spread of generative artificial intelligence and its active use in education. Course and diploma works in their previous format are losing their meaning, but a project cannot be completely generated by a neural network; it will still have to be developed independently, based on personal experience. This is largely creative work, which AI handles poorly so far. Not to mention that potential clients and buyers of such projects can clearly see what is based on real practice and what is invented by the neural network.
“I have attended international conferences and can confirm that colleagues around the world are concerned about how AI will impact education. And in my opinion, these risks are much more dangerous for schools.”
— What opportunities and threats do you see from the use of AI tools in the educational process?
— To be honest, no one was prepared for the scale of the spread of this technology. Not just here, but internationally as well. Everyone faced these challenges all at once. I attended foreign conferences and can confirm that colleagues worldwide are concerned about how AI will impact education. And, in my opinion, these risks are much more dangerous for schools.
At the end of last year, at a large inter-university conference in Egypt, where all the discussions were about AI and its capabilities, one participant demonstrated a striking example. He suggested to the audience: “You all know who the first cosmonaut was, right? Let’s ask this artificial intelligence.” The neural network gave the answer: “Neil Armstrong.” All doubts about its trustworthiness were immediately dispelled. We need to handle these tools carefully, or else even our schoolchildren will think that the first person in space was the American Armstrong.
It is no longer possible to protect oneself from the spread of artificial intelligence, so this movement must be led. It is necessary to devise mechanisms that allow AI to be used beneficially for the educational process, to create quality work with its help. There are already many examples, both positive and negative, on the basis of which decisions can be made.
“Management is the science of how not to become an ineffective manager.”
— Let’s return to your graduates. You prepare managers for various fields and industries, those who will have to organize processes and lead teams. In a sense, you graduate successful people. Have new competencies become mandatory for leaders nowadays?
— You touched on a topic that has been discussed at our university since its foundation. It is the question of whether leadership is an innate quality, whether a leader can be nurtured, how to timely identify these aptitudes in a student, and at what point their development should be supported. We constantly discuss this at various events; our specialized departments and institutes work on this issue.
Management is the science of how not to become an ineffective manager. How to recognize this boundary, how to learn not to cross it? It is an entire process, which we teach. Not only through education.
We have a wide variety of activities, a strong youth movement, and our own sports club. All of this together forms a school for nurturing leaders, where everyone can show themselves as an organizer or a team captain. Many of these young people later take leadership positions in federal bodies, including those for youth policy and economic development. And most importantly, they learn what corporate friendship is.
“Wherever a person works, they must be a specialist in something, not just a manager.”
— Which managers will face the toughest competition in the coming years?
— I share the opinion of the previous leaders of our university that, besides managerial skills, a specialty in a specific industry is needed. Our most successful and well-known graduates are primarily sector managers. Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation Dmitry Patrushev, Minister of Transport Andrey Nikitin, and Head of the Federal Treasury Roman Artyukhin studied with us in specialized fields.
Wherever a person works, they must be a specialist in something, not just a manager. In the 1990s, it was fashionable to remove all industry-specific content from training and make it universal so that a person could be placed to manage anywhere. But for not all sectors of the economy did such a training system prove effective. Time has shown — we need industry specialists. General knowledge in management is not enough.
— An industry-specific approach really seems more serious and fundamental.
— He is historically correct, because if a person does not understand what they are managing, they are likely to make a mess.
Today, I often hear from young people aged 22 that they are ready to practically run the country. At that age, I was not ready to manage anything because I understood that I still had a lot to learn. We try to warn students as much as possible against hasty decisions that could later affect people’s lives.
— Your department of human resource management is the oldest in the country. What is the basis of domestic managerial culture?
— Soviet textbooks on management technology were studied worldwide. These were works thoroughly prepared by entire scientific schools. Recently, we found in our library two copies of the first manual on managing socialist production, which was published in the 1960s under the editorship of Olympiada Vasilievna Kozlova (the founder of management education in Russia, rector of the Moscow Engineering-Economic Institute named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze for 35 years — Editor’s note). We decided to republish it because, except for the initial introductory pages, it is an absolutely relevant textbook that can be used today to teach future managers and develop production in any region of our country.
Many advanced management technologies developed in the Soviet Union were later adopted abroad. I generally believe that we have many illusions about the quality of foreign education. We had partnerships with European universities, I attended their management thesis defenses and was convinced that the level of training at our universities is often higher.
— Vladimir Vitalyevich, how do you understand that something new is happening in the university management processes, something that wasn’t there before in the university?
— Each new incoming cohort brings something new. The applicants themselves change, and accordingly, our approach to all processes has to change as well. Five years ago, the students who enrolled had certain mindsets, and now they are completely different. Especially in the last two years.
As the State University of Management, we train the future elite of the country, its leaders, and for us, it is important that these are people who love and respect their Homeland. I do not want to say lofty words about patriotism, but if our students and graduates are not patriots, then why are we working at all? The changes currently happening in schools regarding the patriotic education of children are already noticeable. This is a completely different generation altogether, and it is wonderful. The main thing is not to derail this spirit and to organize processes in the university so that they continue to develop, receive quality education, and become professionals.
Subscribe to the Telegram channel “Our GUU” Publication date: 8.09.2026
Please note; This information is raw content obtained directly from the information source. It is an accurate report of what the source claims and does not necessarily reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.