dual degree

At the end of last month, my housemate Jono said that they needed some more people to work at an event, and that I should come by and possibly get paid. Partially what reeled me in was that the even was a conference for dual degree programs between American Universities and Russian ones. There were 14 pairings in total, not all accredited and/fully running, but most of them were.  Bard is with Smolny in St. Petersburg.  Many of the institutions I had never heard of, but some are well known, such as Moscow State University, and The Higher School of Economics). Some pairings other pairings were lost on me – Astrakhan State University with Clark University, Irkutsk State University and University of Maryland University College, Omsk State University and SUNY Broome Community College, Tomsky State University of Control Systems and Radio electronics and SUNY Empire State College, Skoltech and MIT. So many different levels of jetlag were represented at the conference, I can say that. There were ear pieces for people to listen to the translators, who sat in a booth in the corner – two aging Russian immigrants.

There are many problems in these programs, and I suppose that’s the point of having a conference, but one of the main issues is that though the duel program is aimed at both Americans and Russians, almost exclusively the result has been Russians with dual degrees. And the difference is staggering, proportions of American to Russian graduates in programs look like this – 0:200, 0:527, 0:795, 2:1090. And of the handful currently enrolled, it sounded like they were like me – ‘heritage’ speakers. One of the supposed problems is that not enough Americans know Russian. But really, it’s probably a question of economics: why would an American want to learn Russian? The only people I know that try to do it because they are interested in Russian culture and literature, but those are not good motivators to get large numbers of Americans through the door. And anyway, none of the duel-degree programs are for ‘Russian studies’ – many of for technology or economics.  This is not true for, say, China, which is both sending students abroad, and educating foreigners. Regardless, this meant that when I did end up talking to the representatives there I got a lot of (joking in Russian) “So I assume you’re from Russia”, making a joke at how obvious it is that I am from Russia, which made my refutation of that ‘fact’ all the sweeter.

Bard 'распушил хвост' or ‘fluffed its feathers’ for the occasion, so I got to see it as I had never before. The very fact that it was inside Blithewood Manor was a revelation to me. I had never expected to set foot inside the building, and in fact when I was told go to Blithewood I dressed warmly, assuming that the event was outside. I treated the mansion as if it was filled with cement, impenetrable though present. They then took us to the Fischer Center were wine and sushi and baked brie was served, before returning to Blithwood. The part of the mansion that I was in is usually closed off even to the Masters Economics students (who usually use it) due to the art collection stored there. The will required security guards or something along those lines, and though I understand nothing about furniture, I did find Egon Schiele paintings. After that dinner was served and I came the next morning to work before they all left for NYC to continue the conference.