Students & Alumni: Professional Development and Well-being

HSE University aims to cultivate and apply the high creative potential of its students and alumni, engaging them in research projects, technological and social entrepreneurship, while also boosting the University’s human and social capital.

Expanding students’ career opportunities:

Introducing mandatory career guidance courses and digital career services for Bachelor’s and Master’s students.
Fostering alumni's digital competencies and indicating their proficiency with various digital technologies.
Involving alumni in HSE University’s activities as lecturers, tutors, corporate partners-employers, experts and investors.

Developing technological entrepreneurship and involving students in R&D activities:

Conducting incubation and acceleration programmes through HSE University’s Business Incubator (HSE Inc), involving students in applied project work: by 2030, 15% of students will be pursuing individual business trajectories.
Creating a University-wide system for cultivating an entrepreneurial culture and competencies, innovative practices among students and academic staff.
Promoting competitions for the scientific and technical business projects - the HSE{Tech}Cup and HSE{Business}Cup, as well as a competition of students' startups - the HSE Startup Cup.
Including research projects in students’ curricula, expanding opportunities for employment at the University’s labs and research centres.
Creating new tools for the development of students' academic and research skills.
Holding competitions for students' R&D projects and supporting their best efforts.

Students’ sustainability projects, ‘service learning’ and well-being:

Creating an HSE Volunteer Centre in each campus, holding student field trips (‘Rediscovering Russia’ project).
Involving students in providing aid to various social groups in partnership with key NGOs: by 2025, 50% of students will take part in service-learning projects.
Ensuring students’ physical and mental health, maintaining psychological stability, resilience and mindfulness.
Covering students’ demand for the social support.

Success Story: Science Republic and Student Research Paper Competitions

HSE University, as a research institution, aims to support students’ R&D initiatives, while also cultivating them as highly motivated and professional academics. The most important tools used to achieve this objective are Science Republic and Student Research Paper Competitions.

Science Republic, founded in 2019, aims to establish informal scientific communication, combined with a free and democratic system of cooperation and knowledge exchange. Participants in this community actively exchange ideas and form interdisciplinary research teams, and participate in regular activities aimed at developing their academic skills (e.g., academic writing, data analysis methods, presentation skills, etc.). Moreover, Science Republic provides financial and organisational support of students’ extracurricular academic mobility, conducts scientific conferences and seminars, and holds contests for research project.

Since 2018, Student Research Paper Competitions have been open for all students of Russian and international universities in more than 25 fields. The aim of this competition is to identify and support the most promising research ideas generated by students. Competition winners receive special scholarships, additional portfolio points for entering Master’s programmes, financial support to take part in international scientific conferences, and special invitation to join Science Republic.

HSE Voices

At HSE University, we have held the Student Research Paper Competition for twenty years now. We have almost 2,000 participants from both Russia and abroad, which is very important. If we do not immerse ourselves in research from a young age, it is much harder to catch up later

Nikita Anisimov
HSE University Rector

I focused on my term paper, in which I studied world systems of university admissions: selectivity, accessibility, and reach in terms of young people. I decided to submit it to the competition. I am very happy that I won!

Sofiya Khabadze
Bachelor’s in Public Administration, winner of the Best Research Paper in Education by Bachelor’s and Specialist Degree Students

New Practice: Startup as a Graduate’s Thesis

Since technological entrepreneurship on the part of students is one of the key pillars for the University’s innovative development, we aim to integrate such activities into various educational tracks. One of the instruments for this is our minor programme ‘Startup as a Graduate Thesis’.

Over a two-year cycle, students get to develop their own projects: from the idea stage to bringing a unique product to market, to scaling and raising investment. This course includes four disciplines, covering key issues of technological entrepreneurship. From the very beginning, mentors and industry experts provide consultation to students’ startup teams. The first year reaches completion with Demo Day, when students present their startups to investors. The second year includes scaling of products and preparation of team members’ final thesis works.